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TO   BB   <  >!'.  I    \  I  N  I    I>    i'.\    ADDRESSING 

ALFRED  W.  MARTIN,  BOX  &&7,  SEATTLE,  WN. 


THE 


WORLD'S  GREAT  RELIGIONS 


BY 

ALFRED  w.  MARTIN. 


A  Series  of  Lectures  on  the  Gospel  of  the 
Seven  Extant  Great  Religions 

HINDUISM,  BUDDHISM,  ZOROASTRIANISM, 

CONFUCIANISM,  JUDAISM,  CHRISTIANITY  AND 

MOHAMMEDANISM 

with  appropriate  Readings  from  the  Bibles  of  these  Religions, 

and 

Portraits  of  Gotama  (the  Buddha),  Zoroaster,  Confucius, 
Lao-Tze,  Moses,  and  Jesus  (the  Christ) 


Published  by  the 

FIRST  FREE  CHURCH  OF  SEATTLE 
1906 


THE  WORLD'S  GREAT  RELIGIONS. 


THE  SYMPHONY  OF  RELIGIONS. 


POEM. 

Jesus,  thy  teachings  oft  have  made  me  smart 
When  I  have  failed  in  love  for  fellow-men. 
Siddartha,  grief  has  been  my  portion  when 
Thy  selflessness  has  taught  my  feverish  heart 
Its  vain  ambitions.    When  some  coward  start 
Has  seized  me,  thou,  Mohammed,  then 
Hast  stirred  to  bravery.    Thy  moral  ken, 
Confucius,  spurs  me  when  I  fail  life's  better  part. 
O  saviors  many,  of  time  old  and  new — 
Alike  ye  lead  from  darkness  to  the  light. 
O  words  as  high  within  my  own  calm  breast, 
Xo  less  ye  summon  Wisdom  to  pursue. 
Still  sound,  0  clarions  of  love  and  right, 
Till  I  win  freedom  serving  your  behest. 


James    H.    West. 


SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS. 
FROM   THE  HINDU  BIBLE. 

Altar  flowers  are  of  many  species,  but  all  worship  is  one. 
Systems  of  faith  differ,  but  God  is  one. 

The  object  of  all  religions  is  alike,  all  seek  the  object  of  their 
love  and  all  the  world  is  love's  dwelling. 

FROM  THE  BUDDHIST. 

The  root  of  religion  is  to  reverence  one's  own  faith  and  never 
to  revile  the  faith  of  others.  My  doctrine  makes  no  dis- 
tinction between  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor;  it  is  like 
the  sky,  it  has  room  for  all,  and  like  water,  it  washes  all 
alike. 


FROM  THE  PARSEE. 

Have  the  religions  of  mankind  no  common  ground?  Is  there 
not  everywhere  the  same  enrapturing  beauty?  Broad  in- 
deed is  the  carpet  which  God  has  spread  and  many  are  the 
colors  He  has  given  it.  Whichever  road  I  take  joins  the 
highway  that  leads  to  Thee. 

FROM  THE  CHINESE. 

Religions  are  many  and  different,  but  reason  is  one.  Humanity 
is  the  heart  of  man,  justice  is  the  path  of  man.  The  broad- 
minded  see  the  truth  in  different  religions;  the  narrow- 
minded  see  only  the  differences. 

FROM  THE  JEWISH. 

Wisdom  is  the  breath  of  the  power  of  God  and  in  all  ages  en- 
tering into  holy  souls  she  maketh  them  friends  of  God  and 
prophets.  Behold  how  good  and  pleasant  a  thing  it  is  for 
brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity. 

FROM  THE  CHRISTIAN. 

Of  a  truth  I  perceive  that  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  but 
in  every  nation  he  that  revereth  God  and  doeth  \vli;it  is 
right  is  accepted  of  Him.  Are  we  not  all  children  of  one 
Father?  Hath  not  one  God  created  us? 

FROM  THE  MOHAMMEDAN. 

Whatever  be  thy  religion  associate  with  men  who  think  dif- 
ferently from  thee.  All  have  a  quarter  of  the  heavens  to 
which  they  turn  and  whichever  way  they  turn,  there  is 
God. 

THE  DISCOURSE. 

Four  great  discoveries  in  the  modern  world  have  com- 
pelled a  reconstruction  of  religious  beliefs.  The  first  of  these 
was  the  discovery  made  by  Copernicus  in  1543,  affecting  the 
Christian  conception  of  God  as  it  had  been  held  for  a  millen- 
ium  and  a  half.  Next,  in  the  order  of  time,  came  the  discov- 
ery of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  causing  a  reconstruction 
of  beliefs  about  the  Bible  and  also  as  to  the  "solitary"  grand- 
eur of  Christianity.  In  1830  Sir  Charles  Lyell  discovered  that 
the  earth  is  vastly  older  than  the  book  of  Genesis  indicates 
and  in  1859  Charles  Darwin  discovered  the  nature  and  origin 

—6— 


of  man  to  be  wholly  different  from  what  the  Bible  teaches 
on  these  two  points,  compelling  surrender  of  the  doctrine  of 
"the  fall  of  man"  and  also  of  the  "atonement  and  redemp- 
tion," doctrines  that  logically  follow  from  the  premise  of  man's 
fall  from  a  pristine  state  of  perfection.  Our  concern  in  this 
series  of  discourses  is  with  the  second  of  these  discoveries. 
When  the  sacred  scriptures,  or  bibles,  of  Arabia,  China,  Persia 
and  India  were  discovered  a  change  began  to  take  place  in 
the  attitude  of  Christians  toward  the  non-Christian  faiths  of 
these  countries,  a  change  that  has  meant  a  remarkable  increase 
of  tolerance,  catholicity  and  appreciation. 

In  711  when  the  Moors  of  Northern  Africa  invaded  Spain, 
it  was  rumored  that  these  Mohammedans  had  a  book  which 
they  described  as  "the  word  of  God"  and  of  which  they  said 
an  exact  copy  exists  in  heaven.  In  the  course  of  the  next  few 
centuries  the  book  was  translated  into  the  chief  languages  of 
Europe  and  is  known  to  us  as  the  Koran. 

In  the  fourteenth  century  certain  European  travellers 
found  their  way  to  a  rich  and  thickly  populated  country  which 
they  called  "Cathay."  Returning  they  reported  on  conditions 
in  what  proved  to  be  the  oldest  existing  empire  and  which 
they  now  pronounced  "China."  They  told  of  the  immense 
literary  productions  of  the  people  and  more  especially  of  the 
books  dealing  with  the  philosophy  of  life  among  which  was  a 
series  of  volumes  containing  a  highly  developed  system  of 
rules  for  the  conduct  of  life  and  which  proved  to  have  been 
partly  compiled  by  Confucius  and  partly  the  work  of  the  great 
sage  himself.  These  books  too  were  translated  into  English 
and  are  known  as  the  "Chinese  Classics,"  or  Bible  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Confucius. 

In  1760,  Anquetil  du  Perron,  while  inspecting  some  dusty 
manuscripts  in  the  royal  library  at  Paris  came  upon  a  frag- 
ment of  a  book  called  the  "Zend  Avesta"  which  turned  out  to 
be  part  of  the  sacred  book  of  the  Parsees,  or  followers  of 
Zoroaster,  or  Zarathustra,  as  he  is  more  properly  called.  Eager 
to  read  the  remainder  of  this  book  he  went  to  the  Parsee  prov- 
ince in  India  and  at  the  end  of  three  years  mastered  the  Zend 
language  and  came  into  possession  of  180  manuscripts  which 
represent  all  that  remain  of  the  Bible  of  the  Zoroastrians.  With 


these  he  returned  to  Paris  and  in  1771  appeared  the  first  trans- 
lation of  this  Bible  into  a  European  language.  A  few  years 
later  the  British  took  possession  and  occupancy  of  India.  That 
commercial  enterprise  led  to  the  discovery  of  the  "Rig-Veda" 
the  oldest  portion  of  the  oldest  Bible  in  the  world,  that  of  the 
Hindus.  It  is  a  collection  of  1,028  hymns  of  ten  or  eleven 
verses  each  with  32  syllables  in  each  line,  making,  together  with 
the  metrical  commentaries,  a  book  four  times  the  size  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments  combined.  Add  to  this  Veda  the 
three  later  Vedas,  the  ceremonial  and  homiletical  books,  the 
philosophical  treatises,  the  book  of  precepts  and  laws  and  the 
great  epic  poems  of  the  "Mahabbarata"  and  "Ramayana"  and 
we  include  all  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hindus.  Then  were 
brought  to  light  other  Indian  books,  the  Bible  of  the  Buddhists, 
so  extensive  that  its  letters  (considered  "holy"  like  those  of  the 
Christian  Bible)  when  counted  number  more  than  eight  times 
as  jiiany  as  the  letters  of  the  two  Testaments. 

The  first  effect  of  the  discovery  of  these  sacred  books  and 
their  translation  into  European  languages  was  the  creation  of 
a  new  science,  the  science  of  Comparative  Religion.  This 
science  proceeding  with  the  method  of  observation,  hypothe- 
sis and  verification,  produced  a  series  of  surprising  results. 
By  the  application  of  this  scientific  method  it  was  proved  (1) 
that  the  moral  ideas  of  justice,  temperance,  charity,  loyalty, 
truthfulness,  patience,  love,  are  common  to  all  the  Bibles  of 
the  great  religions.  (2)  that  the  religious  sentiments — awe,  rev- 
erence, worship,  aspiration  are  likewise  common  to  all  systems 
of  faith.  (3)  that  differences  of  climate  and  environment,  of 
culture  and  racial  origin  have  given  different  forms  of  ex- 
pression to  one  and  the  same  ethical  and  spiritual  substance, 
so  that  whether  it  be  the  Papuan,  squatting  in  dumb  me<lita- 
tion  before  his  feathered  god ;  or  the  Moslem,  prostrate  before 
his  mosque ;  or  the  Christian,  praying  to  his  Father  in  Heaven ; 
or  the  Free  Religionist,  silently  communing  with  the  Infinite 
and  Eternal  One;  it  is  one  and  the  same  yearning  for  a  hiirli 
and  a  deeper  life  that  is  expressed  by  each  and  all.  (4)  This 
science  demonstrated  that  the  ten  commandments  in  slightly 
varying  form  are  to  be  found  in  other  Bibles  besides  the  Je\\'sh 
Bible  and  that  the  golden  rule  is  older  than  Jesus  ;md  common 


to  all  of  the  seven  great  religions,  however  different  the 
phrasing  used  to  express  its  essence.  (5)  This  science  of 
comparative  religion  promptly  destroyed  the  old  and  false 
classification  which  placed  Christianity  in  a  class  by  itself  as 
true,  and  the  rest  elsewhere  as  false.  (6)  It  shattered  the  no- 
tion that  there  were  passages  in  the  Christian  Bible  that  could 
not  be  matched  elsewhere  and  Emerson  as  a  champion  of  the 
new  science  quietly  said  in  reply  to  this  assertion  when  made 
by  a  bumptious  individual  at  a  Boston  meeting,  "Sir,  that 
contention  of  yours  only  proves  how  narrowly  you  have  read." 
Thus  the  first  great  result  of  this  science  has  been  the  dis- 
covery of  these  remarkable  resemblances  and  the  destruc- 
tion of  these  false  and  antiquated  distinctions. 

As  an  illustration  of  the  first  of  these  undisputed  con- 
clusions resulting  from  a  study  of  these  sacred  books,  take  the 
moral  sentiment  of  humility  and  see  how  it  has  been  inculcated 
by  the  various  teachers  of  the  great  religions.  In  the  Hindu 
scriptures  we  read:  "The  soul  is  its  own  witness  therefore 
offend  not  thy  conscious  soul. "  The  Buddhist  version  is :  "Be 
lowly  in  thy  heart  that  thou  mayst  be  lowly  in  thy  actions." 
In  the  Zoroastrian  Bible  it  runs:  "Haughty  thoughts,  like 
thirst  for  gold,  are  sins."  The  Confucian  form  is:  "To  in- 
dulge a  consciousness  of  goodness  is  to  lose  it."  The  Moham- 
medan maxim  reads:  "Defer  humbly  to  thy  superiors,  out  of 
deference  speak  to  them  with  respectful  speech."  In  the  Old 
Testament  we  find  it  stated:  "The  greater  thou  art  the  more 
thou  shouldst  humble  thyself."  The  New  Testament  affirms: 
"Whosoever  shall  humble  himself  as  a  little  child  the  same 
is  greatest  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven."  As  an  example  of  the 
oneness  of  these  sacred  books  in  their  presentation  of  the  re- 
ligious sentiments,  take  the  consciousness  of  man's  kinship  to 
God  and  his  sense  of  immortality.  Note  how  the  seven  Bibles 
of  the  seven  religions  deliver  a  uniform  message  in  varying 
words  of  man's  hope  of  a  hereafter  based  on  the  conviction  that 
he  is  a  soul  and  comes  from  the  Eternal.  "Give  to  the  plants 
and  waters  thy  body,  but  there  is  an  immortal  part  of  thee 
which  belongs  to  the  world  of  the  holy"  is  what  we  read  in 

—9— 


the  Hindu  scriptures.  In  those  of  Buddhism  we  are  told  "the 
soul  is  myself,  the  body  is  only  my  dwelling  place."  Says  the 
Zoroastrian  Bible,  "I  fear  not  death,  I  fear  only  not  having 
lived  well  enough. ' '  The  Confucian  affirmation  reads :  ' '  Man 
never  dies.  Because  men  see  only  their  bodies  do  they  hate 
death."  And  the  Mohammedan  Qur'an  records  the  invitation, 
"0  thou  soul  which  art  at  rest  return  unto  thy  Lord  well 
pleased  with  thy  reward  and  well  pleasing  unto  God."  The 
Jewish  Bible  declares  "the  memorial  of  virtue  is  immortal.  The 
righteous  shall  be  held  in  everlasting  remembrance."  The  New 
Testament  states  that  though  ' c  our  outward  man  perish  our  in- 
ward man  is  day  by  day  renewed." 

Speak  the  Golden  Rule  in  a  Christian  church  and  its  echo 
is  heard  in  every  temple,  synagogue  and  mosque:  The  seven 
statements  recorded  by  the  seven  religions  of  "the  Golden 
Rule"  are  these: 

Hindu:  "The  true  rule  is  to  do  by  the  things  of  others  as  you  do 
by  your  own." 

Buddhist:  "One  should  seek  for  others  the  happiness  one  desires 
for  one's  self." 

Parsee:     "Do  as  you  would  be  done  by." 

Confucian:  "What  you  would  not  wish  done  to  yourself  do  not 
to  others." 

Mohammedan:  "Let  none  of  you  treat  a  brother  in  a  way  he 
himself  would  dislike  to  be  treated." 

Jewish:  "Whatever  you  do  not  wish  your  neighbor  to  do  to  you 
do  not  unto  him." 

Christian:  "All  things  whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should 
do  to  you  do  ye  even  so  to  them." 

The  second  great  result  of  the  discovery  of  these  sacred 
books  was  none  other  than  the  famous  convention  called  at 
Chicago  in  1893 — the  World's  Parliament  of  Religions.  But 
for  the  realization  of  the  first  great  result  of  this  discovery,  the 
second  could  not  have  been  achieved.  It  followed  naturally 
and  spontaneously  as  a  consequence  of  the  first,  the  World's 
Fair  being  simply  the  adequate  occasion  for  realizing  the 
dream  of  such  an  assembly.  Since  the  discovery  of  America 
nothing  has  marked  the  advance  of  civilization  so  decisively 
as  this  mammoth  convocation.  Here  was  something  bigger 
than  the  Ferris  wheel,  brighter  than  the  splendor  of  the  great 

—10— 


white  city  itself.  Yes,  even  that  magnificent  panorama  of 
architecture  afforded  by  the  exposition  buildings,  paled  be- 
fore the  procession  of  the  world's  great  faiths.  At  the  head 
of  that  procession  walked  a  Swedenborgian  layman,  C.  C. 
Bonney,  president. of  the  Parliament,  arm  in  arm  with  scarlet- 
robed  Cardinal  Gibbons,  the  highest  dignitary  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  the  United  States.  Then  followed  Jew  and 
Greek,  Christian  and  Confucian,  Buddhist  and  Brahmin,  Meth- 
odist missionary  and  Hindu  monk ;  all  in  one  triumphal  march 
of  brotherhood.  Would  that  some  painter  had  been  present 
to  put  on  canvass  that  memorable  scene,  the  assembling  on  one 
platform  of  these  representatives  of  the  world's  religions, 
prophetic  of  the  death-knell  of  sectarian  exclusiveness,  rivalry 
and  pride,  and  symbolic  of  the  coming  peace  among  conflict- 
ing systems  of  faith. 

The  parliament  was  conceived  and  planned  by  a  Pres- 
byterian preacher,  Dr.  J.  Henry  Barrows.  The  closing 
speech  was  made  by  a  Swedenborgian,  Charles  C.  Bon- 
ney; the  final  prayer  was  offered  by  a  Jewish  rabbi  and 
the  benediction  pronounced  by  a  bishop  of  the  Roman  Catholic 
church.  What  is  called  Christian  courtesy  was  manifested  to 
a  much  more  marked  degree  by  the  "heathen''  delegates  than 
by  the  "Christian."  The  one  discordant  note  came  not  from 
any  "pagan"  source,  but  from  the  Reverend  Joseph  Cook  of 
"Boston  Monday  Lectureship"  fame,  who  took  occasion  to 
cast  aspersions  upon  the  beliefs  of  those  who  did  not  acknow- 
ledge Jesus  as  the  Christ  of  God,  the  soje  savior  of  mankind.  Of 
the  one  hundred  and  thirty-nine  sects  into  which  Christianity 
has  thus  far  been  divided,  all  those  having  a  large  following 
were  represented  at  the  parliament  except  the  Episcopalian. 
Officially  this  branch  of  the  Christian  church  was  not  repre- 
sented but  many  Episcopal  clergymen  were  present  on  their 
own  responsibility,  notably  Revs.  A.  W.  Momerie  of  London 
and  Heber  Newton  of  New  York.  The  American  church  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  the  Anglic'an  church  in  declining  to  par- 
ticipate in  the  proceedings  of  the  parliament.  The  archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  head  of  the  Anglican  church,  took  the  ground 
that  for  Christianity  to  be  represented  on  the  platform  with  all 

—11— 


the  non-Christian  faiths  placed  it  on  a  level  of  equality  with 
these  and  as  this  could  not  be  admitted  by  the  archbishop,  the 
only  alternative  was  to  withhold  the  representation  of  his 
church.  Given  his  viewpoint  there  was  no  alternative  open. 
He  could  not  make  Christianity  part  of  the  parliament  without 
admitting  thereby  that  the  other  religions  had  equal  claims  with 
it  and  in  this  he  was  indisputably  correct.  For  when  Christian- 
ity through  its  representatives  did  consent  to  sit  in  the  parlia- 
ment on  equal  terms  with  the  other  faiths,  it  surrendered, 
whether  intentionally  or  unintentionally,  the  claim  to  be  the 
one  only  divine  religion  in  the  world. 

The  effect  of  the  Parliament  on  the  non-Christian  foreign 
delegates  was  to  give  them  a  better  impression  of  Christianity 
than  they  ever  had  before.  Christianity  had  come  to  them  in 
war  ships  and  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet.  It  had  come  with 
a  missionary  and  a  Bible,  indeed,  but  with  opium  and  the  rum- 
bottle  besides.  Moreover,  when  the  missionary  came  it  was 
with  a  haughty,  presumptuous,  un-Christian  air,  seeking  to 
persuade  these  pagan  people  that  unless  they  adopted  his  re- 
ligion they  were  utterly,  hopelessly  lost.  But  at  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Religions,  these  so-called  pagan  people  had  an  op- 
portunity to  see  some  of  the  finest  representatives  of  Chris- 
tianity, some  of  the  noblest  products  of  western  civilization ; 
consequently  they  returned  to  their  homes  in  the  Orient  with 
new  and  corrected  conceptions  of  Christianity  and  its  repre- 
sentatives. The  effect  of  the  Parliament  on  i'lirist  inns  was  to 
alter  the  Pharisaic  tone  with  which  they  had  thanked  God 
that  they  were  not  blasphemers,  atheists,  infidels  or  evon  as 
these  idolators.  The  Parliament  opened  Christian  eyes  to  the 
fact  that  only  one  third  of  the  world's  population  has  adopted 
Christianity,  that  all  of  the  great  religions  excepting  Mo- 
hammedanism, are  older  than  Christianity  and  rich  in  moral 
and  spiritual  precept  and  example.  The  Parliament  made  it 
thenceforth  impossible  for  any  Christian  missionary  ever  again 
to  go  to  India  or  China  or  any  other  foreign  country  with  the 
message,  carried  thither  for  centuries  before,  that  two  thirds 
of  God's  children  are  doomed  eternally  unless  they  become 
converted  to  the  Christian  system  of  theology.  In  the  spring 
of  1893  the  American  Board  of  Foreign  Missions  debated  the 

—12— 


question  whether  or  not  missionaries  should  be  allowed  to  go 
to  the  Orient  unless  they  were  prepared  to  teach  the  doctrines 
of  the  "fall  of  man"  and  "hell"  for  unbelievers  therein.  But 
sine*-  the  autumn  of  that  year  no  such  qualification  has  been 
ivijuiivd  and  never  again  will  be.  In  short,  the  one  grand 
effect  of  the  Parliament  has  been  a  broadening  of  sympathies, 
a  removing  of  prejudices  and  misunderstandings,  a  revealing 
of  common,  moral  and  religious  ideas  and  ideals,  irresistibly 
making  for  the  brotherhood  of  man  to  a  degree  unprecedented 
in  the  history  of  civilization.  Each  year  sectarian  barriers 
are  being  removed,  creeds  being  revised  or  rejected  and  em- 
phasis is  being  increasingly  laid  upon  the  forces  that  make  for 
spiritual  union  and  practical  co-operation.  The  movement, 
however  slow  or  dimly  perceived,  is  yet  unmistakably  in  the 
direction  of  greater  freedom  of  thought,  more  allegiance  to  the 
scientific  method  in  solving  open  questions  of  morals  and 
faith  and  the  assumption  of  a  more  catholic,  appreciative,  cos- 
mopolitan attitude  among  people  of  different  persuasions. 

Of  the  world's  great  historical  religions  there  are  but  seven 
extant.  The  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  religions  lost  their  in- 
dependent existence  more  than  twenty-five  centuries  ago.  The 
Egyptian  religion  perished  as  a  separate  system  of  faith  with 
the  decline  and  fall  of  the  civilization  that  had  professed  it. 
The  Greek  religion  gave  place  to  the  Roman  and  the  Roman  in 
due  time  was  replaced  by  the  Christian,  which  in  the  process 
of  Roman  conversion  adopted  and  adapted  many  pagan  customs 
and  beliefs. 

Herder,  the  German  dramatist,  compared  the  world's  great 
religions  to  the  strings  of  a  harp,  each  of  which  gives  forth 
a  peculiar  note  of  its  own,  while  the  harmonious  blending  of 
all  produces  a  symphony  of  music.  Each  of  the  seven  extant 
great  religions  has  its  dominant  note,  its  distinctive  feature,  a 
doctrine  that  differentiates  it  from  all  the  rest,  the  several  melo- 
dies constituting,  when  blended,  a  symphony  of  universal  re- 
ligion. The  dominant  note  of  Hinduism  is  the  Divine  Presence 
pervading  nature;  of  Buddhism,  renunciation;  of  Parsism, 
purity;  of  Confucianism,  reverence  for  the  past;  of  Judaism, 
righteousness;  of  Christianity,  love;  of  Mohammedanism,  sub- 
mission. 

—13— 


Even  as  the  seven  primary  colors  of  the  prism  when 
blended  give  us  a  ray  of  pure  white  light,  so  the  seven  great 
religions,  having  each  its  individual  color,  when  blended  create 
the  pure  white  light  of  non-sectarian  or  universal  religion. 
To  the  end,  then,  that  we  may  learn  our  indebtedness  to  these 
great  systems  of  faith,  see  what  permanent  contribution  of 
moral  and  spiritual  helpfulness  each  has  made  and  profit  prac- 
tically in  the  conduct  of  life  by  our  study,  let  us  go,  like  pil- 
grims, with  the  scrip  of  sympathy  and  the  staff  of  sincerity 
to  the  shrines  of  the  world's  great  faiths,  to  find,  on  each  of 
the  seven  Sundays,  moral  inspiration  and  spiritual  refreshment 
at  the  shrine. 


-14- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  HINDUISM. 

POEM. 
From  the  "Rig-Veda,"  Mandala  X;  translated  by  late  F.  Max  Mueller. 


Nor  aught  nor  naught  existed ;  yon  bright  sky 

Was  not,  nor  heaven's  broad  roof  outstretched  above; 

What  covered  all?  What  sheltered?    What  concealed? 

There  was  not  death,  hence  was  there  naught  immortal 

There  was  no  light  of  night,  no  light  of  day, 

The  only  One  breathed  breathless  in  itself, 

Other  than  it  there  nothing  since  has  been. 

Darkness  there  was,  and  all  at  first  was  veiled  ' 

In  gloom  profound,  an  ocean  without  light. 

Then  first  came  Love  upon  it,  the  new  germ 

Of  mind;  yea  poets  in  their  hearts  discerned 

Pondering  this  bond  between  created  things 

And  uncreated.    Came  this  ray  from  earth 

Piercing  and  all-pervading,  or  from  heaven? 

Then  seeds  were  sown  and  mighty  powers  arose, 

Who  knows  the  secret?    Who  proclaimed  it  here, 

Whence,  whence  this  manifold  creation  sprang? 

The  most  high  Seer  that  is  in  highest  heaven, 

He  knows  it — or  perchance  e'en  He  knows  not. 


SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS. 
PENITENTIAL,   PSALM,    FROM  THE  "RIG- VEDA." 

(Compare  Ps.  CXXX  in  the  Old  Testament;  also  the  "Litany"  of  the 
Episcopal  Prayer  Book.) 

0  Varuna,  Thou  bright  and  strong  God  have  mercy. 
Through  want  of  strength  have  I  gone  astray,  have  mercy 

Almighty,  have  mercy. 

1  go  along  trembling  like  a  cloud  driven  before  the  wind,  have 

mercy  Almighty,  have  mercy. 

It  was  not  my  will  that  led  me  astray;    wine,    anger,    dice, 
thoughtlessness;  have  mercy  Almighty  One. 

—15— 


Not  yet,  0  Varuna,  cause  me  to  enter  the  grave,  have  mercy, 

Almighty,  have  mercy. 
Absolve  us  all  from  the  sins  of  our  fathers  and  from  those  we 

ourselves  commit. 
O  Varuna,  it  was  necessity,  it  was  temptation,  have  mercy, 

Almighty,  have  mercy. 


PRAYER,  FROM  THE  "RIG-VEDA." 

O  Thou  Almighty  One,  thine  we  are;  we  who  go  on  our 
way  are  upheld  by  Thee.  Day  after  day  we  approach  Thee 
with  reverence.  In  Thy  friendship  we  are  at  home.  Deliver 
us  this  day  from  heinous  sins,  give  us  understanding  as  a  father 
his  sons  and  keep  us  in  Thy  blessed  protection  forever. 


THE    DISCOURSE. 

"I  first  call  Agni  hither,  for  our  happiness, 

I  then  call  Mitra-Varuna  to  shield  us  here, 

I  call  on  Ratri  (night),  sending  all  the  world  to  rest, 

I  call  for  help  on  Savitri  (Sun)  the  brightest  god."— (Rig  Veda  I,  35.) 


The  effort  to  deal  with  seven  great  religions,  each  com- 
pressed into  a  single  discourse  of  forty  minutes  would  appall 
even  the  most  audacious  of  speakers  .  My  task  is  humbler  and 
more  limited  in  scope.  Instead  of  trying  to  give  a  detailed  and 
critical  account  of  these  religions  I  shall  seek  to  indicate  the 
peculiar  message  of  each,  showing  what  each  has  that  serves  to 
differentiate  it  in  some  marked  degree  from  all  the  rest.  Re- 
verting to  Herder's  comparison,  I  shall  endeavor  to  sound  the 
note  which  each  contributes  to  the  symphony  of  universal 
religion  and  make  this  the  main  purpose,  the  positive  and 
constructive  aim  of  each  discourse.  A  religion  can  be  under- 
stood only  by  sympathy  and  freedom  from  bias ;  a  religion  can 
be  expounded  only  as  the  speaker  puts  himself,  for  the  time 
being,  into  the  heart  of  that  religion,  and  so  presents  its  par- 
ticular gospel  that  any  one  of  its  most  devout  and  learned  ad- 
herents would  endorse  the  presentation  and  feel  that  the  aim 
in  view  had  been  in  large  measure  fulfilled. 

—16— 


Partiality  is  just  as  fatal  to  equity  as  is  prejudice,  when 
judging  the  world's  great  religions.  Consequently  he  who 
stands  outside  of  them  all  has  an  advantage  which  discipleship 
to  any  one  of  them  is  apt  to  forbid.  When  the  forester  in 
Aesop's  Fable,  wished  to  persuade  the  lion  that  a  man  is, 
stronger  than  a  lion  he  showed  him  the  statue  which  repre- 
sented a  man  in  the  act  of  throwing  down  a  lion.  Whereupon 
the  lion  remarked,  "their  positions  would  have  been  reversed 
had  a  lion  been  the  sculptor."  The  fact  that  Christians  have 
been  for  the  most  part  the  sculptors  of  the  non-Christian  re- 
ligions explains  in  some  measure  the  lack  of  justice  done  them 
in  Christian  books.  He  whose  position  is  wholly  non-sectarian 
is  much  more  likely,  by  reason  of  his  universality,  to  arrive  at 
just  conclusions  regarding  these  religions  than  is  he  who  stands 
already  committed  to  one  of  them.  From  a  non-sectarian 
view  point,  with  no  other  desire  than  to  see  the  truth  as  it  is, 
animated  by  sympathy  and  appreciation,  with  no  pre-estab- 
lished preference  for  one  religion  rather  than  another,  let  us 
approach  these  great  religions  and  seek  the  distinctive  gospel 
of  each,  beginning  with  Hinduism,  which,  in  its  earliest  form, 
as  "Vedism,"  represents  probably  the  oldest  of  all.  Hinduism,, 
like  every  other  great  religion,  has  had  its  evolution  and  it  can 
therefore  be  intelligently  studied  only  in  the  light  of  its  de- 
velopment. Perhaps  in  no  better  way  can  we  determine  and 
appreciate  what  the  gospel  of  Hinduism  is  than  by  tracing 
the  successive  stages  of  its  growth. 

India,  or  Hindustan,  is  an  immense  country  to  be  com- 
pared, not  with  Spain,  Germany,  or  France,  but  only  with  Eu- 
rope itself,  for 'it  is  as  large  as  all  Europe  minus  Russia.  Down 
its  western  slope  flows  the  mighty  river  "Indus,"  which  means 
"great  stream"  and  Hindustan  denotes  "land  of  the  great 
stream." 

Four  thousand  years  ago  this  vast  country  was  inhabited 
by  a  variety  of  ferocious  tribes  who  were  gradually  conquered 
by  a  new  and  warlike  people  from  beyond  the  Himalayas,  on 
the  table-lands  of  Central  Asia.  These  invaders  called  them- 

—17— 


selves  "Aryas,"  i.  e.,  lordly,  or  worthy  ones.    They  were  gifted 

with  poetic  imagination,  memory,  language,  keen  intellectual- 
ity and,  above  all,  with  a  strong  religious  instinct.  While  still 
a  migratory  people,  before  they  had  crossed  the  Indus  and  en- 
tered India  proper,  they  had  composed  hymns  which  testify 
to  intense  religious  feeling,  fostered  in  the  presence  of  the 
Himalayas,  the  Indus,  and  other  nature-marvels  of  their  en- 
vironment. The  oldest  hymns  of  the  collection  known  as  the 
" Rig- Veda"  belong  to  this  primitive  period,  showing  that  at 
first  these  Aryas  were  simple  nature  worshippers,  personifying 
the  forces  and  phenomena  of  nature,  singing  hymns  to  these 
deities  and  offering  to  them  sacrifices  because  of  the  relation 
in  which  they  believed  their  gods  stood  to  human  affairs.  Grad- 
ually and  by  a  perfectly  natural  process,  a  pantheon  of  gods 
was  formed  consisting  eventually  of  3,338  deities,  classified 
in  three  main  groups,  suggested  by  the  three  divisions  of 
nature  about  them,  viz:  gods  of  the  earth,  of  the  air,  and  of 
the  sky.  Along  with  this  polytheistic  process  went  the 
development  of  the  sacrifices,  becoming  increasingly  elaborate 
and  ritualistic  and  giving  rise  in  due  time  to  a  system  of 
"castes."  Thus  there  grew  up  a  systematic  religion  with  its 
sacred  book,  "The  Vedas,"  its  ceremonial  of  hymns  and  sac- 
rifices and  its  castes.  This  stage  of  India's  religious  develop- 
ment is  usually  called  "Brahmanism,"  even  as  the  unorganized 
primitive  type  of  religion  with  its  Vedic  hymns,  simple  sacri- 
fices is  known  as  "Vedism."  Brahmanism  took  its  name  from 
"Brahma,"  the  soul  of  the  universe,  the  underlying  essence 
of  all  that  is,  a  religious  concept  dimly  perceived  in  the  Vedic 
period,  definitely  expressed  in  the  Brahmanic  period  and  de- 
veloped in  true  philosophical  fashion  in  the  "Vedanta"  and 
other  systems  of  philosophy,  all  of  which  are  rooted  in  the 
"Rig- Veda."  But  the  excessive  devotion  of  Brahmanism  to 
ceremonial  usages  and  the  increasing  exclusiveness  caused  by 
the  caste-system  led  inevitably  to  a  reaction  in  favor  of  prac- 
tical piety  as  opposed  to  ritualism  and  in  favor  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man  as  opposed  to  castes.  This  reaction  occurred  about 
550  B.  C.  and  was  led  by  Siddartha,  or  Gotama,  the  Buddha. 

—18— 


Long  and  obstinate  was  the  struggle  between  Buddhism  and 
Brahmanism  in  India.  By  wisely  adopting  some  of  the  former's 
best  elements  Brahmanism  succeeded  in  checking  the  Buddhis- 
tic reaction  and  keeping  its  hold  on  the  masses.  By  the  end  of 
the  tenth  century  of  our  era  Buddhism  had  been  practically 
banished  from  India  to  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean.  Thus 
the  more  familiar  reaction  represented  by  Protestantism  in  the 
sixteenth  century  and  the  counter-Reformation  of  Cath- 
olicism had  a  prototype  and  parallel  in  the  history  of  India 'a 
religion.  Today  the  vast  majority  of  the  people  of  India  are 
Hindus.  They  belong  to  the  third  period  in  the  evolution  of  the 
Vedic  faith,  and  which  may  be  distinguished  from  "Vedism"^ 
and  "Brahmanism"  by  the  term  "Hinduism."  The  masses 
worship  "Vishnu"  and  the  other  Vedic  gods.  They  also  avail 
themselves  of  idols,  lirst  introduced  at  the  time  of  the  counter 
reformation.  But  it  should  be  understood  that  these  idols 
are  used  simply  as  aids  to  concentration  in  worship  of  the 
gods.  The  Hindu  idols  are  not  worshipped  as  gods,  but  serve 
simply  to  help  the  worshipper  in  concentrating  his  thought 
and  feeling  on  the  real  object  of  his  worship.  The  cultured 
people  of  India,  who  hold  to  "Hinduism"  worship  "Brahma" 
and  retain  all  the  finer  elements  of  the  two  older  faiths.  A  few 
decades  ago  the  "Brahmo-Somaj  (Society  of  God)  was  or- 
ganized in  India,  under  Ram  Mohun  Roy,  an  independent  and 
truly  catholic  thinker.  This  is  an  eclectic  movement  which 
claims  several  "thousand  adherents  and  with  which  our  two- 
societies  for  Universal  Religion  have  much  in  common.  Both 
the  masses  and  the  cultured  Hindus  agree  in  regarding  the 
Vedas  as  the  chief  of  their  sacred  books  and  the  oldest  of 
lhis<  ;is  containing  the  root  of  their  religion.  They  believe 
moreover,  that  these  hymns  of  the  "Rig-Veda"  (hymns  of  re- 
ligious knowledge)  were  first  recited  by  the  "Rishis"  or  sacred 
bards  of  the  various  Aryan  tribes,  but  not  that  they  origin- 
ated tin1  hymns.  These  the  Rishis  "saw  in  vision,"  they  were 
"revealed"  to  them,  having  existed  from  all  eternity.  Such  is. 
the  Hindu  doctrine  of  the  inspiration  of  their  scriptures.  These 
hymns  were  not  committed  to  writing  till  about  1500  A. 

—19— 


D.  Prior  to  this  date  they  were  memorized  and  transmitted 
orally  from  one  generation  to  the  next  by  students  selected  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  memorizing  the  Vedas. 

When  we  consult  the  "Vedas"  to  determine  what  the  gos- 
pel common  to  Vedism,  Brahmanism  and  Hinduism  is  we 
find  it  to  be  the  existence  of  a  power  within  each  of  the  forces 
and  phenomena  of  nature,  ruling  it  and  also  influencing  human 
affairs.  Open  the  Rig- Veda  anywhere  and  you  read  the  daily 
drama  of  sunrise  and  sunset,  of  dawn  and  twilight,  of  sunshine 
and  rain,  of  wind  and  storm,  of  light  and  darkness.  "What 
else,"  asks  Max  Mueller  (to  whom  we  are  chiefly  indebted  for 
what  we  know  of  the  Vedas)  "was  there  to  interest  these 
Aryan  shepherd-folk,  but  this  very  drama."  Yet  'twould  be  a 
sorry  mistake  to  see  in  these  descriptions  merely  an  account 
of  nature-processes.  These  Aryas  addressed  the  sun,  the  wind, 
the  rain,  the  storm,  etc.,  with  the  pronoun  "Thou."  In  the 
words  of  one  of  the  Bishis,  "we  are  not  sun  worshippers,  not 
fire-worshippers,  not  wind-worshippers,  but  sun,  fire,  wind  are 
symbols  of  a  power  within  them  ruling  them  and  related  in 
various  ways  to  man."  When,  therefore,  the  Hindu  says 
"Savitri,  Thou  sun,"  he  is  not  thinking  of  the  fiery  ball 
that  rises  over  the  Himalayas  and  sets  behind  the  Indus,  but 
of  the  power  within  or  behind  the  sun,  which  is  responsible  for 
all  that  the  sun  does,  as  giver  of  heat,  or  of  light,  as  creator  or 
as  destroyer.  Agni,  Indra,  Vaiyu,  Ushas,  Dyaus,  Maruts ;  what 
are  all  these  names  but  attempts  on  the  part  of  these  people 
to  express  the  infinite  in  the  finite,  the  invisible  in  the  visible, 
the  supernatural  in  the  natural.  And  when  the  worshipper  in 
ancient  India  addressed  any  one  of  his  3338  gods  he  for  the 
time  being  was  regarded  as  the  supreme  god.  Moreover,  each 
god  had  various  functions  and  in  many  instances  these  were 
interchangeable  among  gods.  Hence  arose  the  at  first  dim 
but  steadily  clarifying  conception  of  an  underlying  unity  or 
single  universal  power;  Prajapati,  Atman,  Brahma,  being  the 
names  by  which  this  cosmic  god  was  calle'd  in  the  later  sin-red 
literature.  In  this  connection  let  me  quote  a  few  passages 

—20— 


from  the  foremost  authority  on  onr  subject.    He  says:* 

"When  we  take  day  and  night,  spring  and  winter,  as  they 
come  and  1:0.  \\.-  shall  find  in  these  hymns,  thoughts  such  as 
would  naturally  spring  up  in  the  minds  of  any  unsophisticated 
observers  who  feel  that  there  must  be  something  behind  the 
visible  world,  some  powers  or  persons  directing  the  course 
of  nature,  possibly  some  power  even  beyond  the  powers,  whom 
they  called  Devas  or  Bright  Ones whose  daily  proces- 
sion began  with  the  twin  Asvins  (Day  and  Night)  fol- 
lowed by  Ushas  (Dawn)  Surya  (wife  of  the  sun),  Saranyu, 
(early  dawn)  Savitri  (the  enlivening  sun)  Bhaga,  (the  sun  be- 
fore sunrise)  Surya  (the  risen  sun)  ....  Originally  the 
Asvins  were  meant  for  the  morning  and  evening,  for  the  two 
halves  of  the  diurnal  twenty-four  hours.  Then,  by  sim- 
ply being  addressed  in  the  second  person,  day  and  night  be- 
came personified,  became  human  and  even  divine  and  almost 
every  blessing  that  comes  from  day  and  night,  especially  health 
and  length  of  days,  would  naturally  be  ascribed  to  them. 
Thus  they  gradually  assumed  the  general  character  of  saviors 
and  of  physicians,  their  chief  work  being  to  restore  life  to 
renew  youth,  or  to  give  sight  to  the  blind." 

The  same  tendency  and  process  reappears  in  the  hymns 
to  Savitri,  the  sun,  as  giver  of  light  and  of  life,  to  Agni,  fire 
on  the  hearth  and  on  the  altar;  also  light,  and  more  espe- 
cially the  light  of  the  sun;  to  Ratri.  night;  and  to  Varuna, 
night  as  the  coverer.  Nay  more,  belief  in  and  worship  of  these 
gods,  the  powers  within  or  behind  the  phenomena  of  nature, 
trrew  into  belief  in  and  worship  of  mortal  attributes.  In  one 
of  the  hymns  to  Varuna  the  worshipper,  deeply  conscious  of 
sin.  first  questions  whether  he  can  really  approach  the  god  and 
find  favor  in  his  sight  and  then  bursts  out  into  a  passionate 
plea  for  forgiveness  and  redemption  from  his  sins,  feeling  that 
Yanma  is  a  moral  no  less  than  a  physical  god,  a  god  of  moral 
actions  no  less  than  of  the  all-covering  night.  Every  aspect 
of  nature  gave  to  the  Aryas  cause  for  reflection  and  produced 
the  belief  that  some  power  resided  within  or  behind  each  force, 

•Max  Mueller,    "Auld   Lang  Syne,"  Second  Series,  pp.  209  sq. 


phenomenon,  or  law,  so  that  no  part  of  the  universe  was  regard- 
ed from  a  physical  or  material  standpoint  alone,  but  always 
as  embodying  or  expressing  a  power  higher  than  man  and 
capable  of  influencing  human  affairs. 

And  now,  I  ask,  in  what  sense  have  we  outgrown  the 
theism  of  the  Vedas,  the  gospel  of  the  Divine  in  nature 
as  set  forth  in  the  oldest  and  most  precious  part  of  the  Hindu 
Bible?  Only  in  this:  we  have  dropped  the  letter  "s."  They 
recognized  deities,  we  know  only  Deity.  They  spoke  of  gods, 
we  speak  of  God.  They  thought  of  the  universe  as  split  up 
into  innumerable  parts,  each  superintended  by  a  particular 
deity  of  its  own ;  we  think  of  the  universe  as  a  unit,  an  organic 
whole,  superintended  by  a  Power,  indestructible,  omnipotent, 
infinite  and  manifested  in  myriad  forms.  They  derived  their 
theory  of  the  universe  mainly  from  abstract  speculation,  we 
derived  ours  from  concrete  dealing  with  the  forces  and  phen- 
omena of  nature  themselves.  For  we  owe  our  conception  of  the 
unity  of  the  universe  and  our  modern  conception  of  God  to 
the  labors  of  Count  Rumford,  Joule,  Tyndall,  Helmholz  and 
a  host  of  other  physicists,  who,  through  actual  contact  with 
nature,  furnished  the  cumulative  evidence  which  proves  that 
the  universe  is  "a  living  whole,"  the  product  of  an  infinite 
and  eternal  Power,  whence  nature  and  human  nature  have 
been  derived.  But  despite  this  difference  between  the  Hindu 
pantheon  and  our  scientific  theism  the  former  still  lias  its 
value  for  the  modern  world,  serving  to  bring  home  to  us  the 
helpful  truth  that  all  nature  is  divine,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  "dead  matter,"  that  wherever  we  turn  we  are  face 
to  face  with  the  Divine.  When  we  look  up  into  the  night  sky, 
and  feel  the  grandeur  and  solemnity  of  the  starry  march  we 
cannot  stop  at  the  stars  any  more  than  could  the  Rishis  \vh<> 
sang  the  Vedic  hymns.  It  is  the  power,  the  majesty,  the  mys- 
tery of  the  infinite  life  of  God  that  shines  down  upon  us  out 
of  the  firmament.  With  the  aid  of  the  spectroscope  we  analy/e 
a  beam  of  light  as  it  passes  through  a  cubic  inch  of  space.  We 
note  the  billion  heat-waves  and  light-waves.  The  devout  Hindu 
would  not  pause  at  these  but  proceed  in  thought  to  the  divini- 
ties of  heat  and  light.  Even  so  should  we  observe  not  only 

22 


the  independent,  myriad  waves,  but  also  the  exactness  of  God, 
the  economy  of  God,  the  love  of  God  revealed  in  that  cubic 
inch  of  space.  Similarly,  when  looking  into  the  eyes  of  a 
friend,  contemplating  his  beauty  of  soul  and  the  inspiration  he 
is  to  me,  I  am  reminded  by  the  message  of  Hinduism  with  its 
gospel  of  the  Divine  in  nature  and  in  man,  that  I  see  in  all 
this  beauty  of  soul  and  inspiration  and  friendship,  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  infinitely  Divine  that  wells  up  in  my  friend  as  the 
vitalizing  force  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  life  and  which  the 
sacred  bard  of  ancient  India  merely  pluralized  because  the 
scientific  conception  of  the  unity  of  the  universe  had  not  yet 
been  discerned.  Therefore  I  hold  that  Hinduism  has  its  help- 
fulness for  us  today  by  reminding  us  that  spirit  is  bound  up  with 
matter  in  all  its  forms,  that  the  universe  is  throbbing,  thrill- 
ing, pulsing  with  divine  energy  and  divine  meaning.  Nay  more, 
the  gospel  of  Hinduism  is  not  only  the  revelation  of  God  in 
nature;  it  suggests  also  the  deeper  truth  that  all  things  and 
beings,  according  to  their  capacity,  contain  God.  A  stone  con- 
tains less  than  a  crystal,  a  crystal  less  than  a  plant,  a  plant  less 
than  an  animal,  an  animal  less  than  a  savage,  a  savage  less  than 
a  civilian,  a  Nero  less  than  an  Aurelius,  a  Judas  less  than  a 
Jesus.  Even  as  a  pint-pot  cannot  hold  a  gallon,  so  a  low,  crude, 
undeveloped  soul  cannot  contain  as  much  of  God  as  one  re- 
fined and  purified.  Hence  our  mission  in  life  is  none  other  than 
that  of  the  Hindu.  His  highest'  aim  in  life  must  be  also  ours, 
to  become  so  developed,  so  refined,  so  purified  as  to  contain  ever 
more  and  more  of  God  throughout  the  eternity  in  which  we  live. 


-23- 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  BUDDHISM. 

BUDDHIST  BEATITUDES. 
(TRANSLATED,  FROM  THE  PALI.  BY  T.  W.  RHYS-DAVIDS  ) 

Not  to  serve  the  foolish, 

But  to  serve  the  wise; 

To  honor  those  worthy  of  honor; 

This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

To  support  father  and  mother, 
To  cherish  wife  and  child, 
To  follow  a  peaceful  calling; 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

To  bestow  alms  and  live  righteously, 
To  give  help  to  kindred, 
Deeds  which   cannot   be  blamed, 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

To  abhor  and  cease  from  sin, 
Abstinence  from  strong  drink, 
Not  to  be  weary  in  well-doing; 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

Reverence  and  lowliness, 
Contentment  and  gratitude, 
The  hearing  of  the  Law  at  due  seasons ; 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

To  be  long-suffering  and  meek, 
To  associate  with  the  tranquil, 
Religious  talk  at  due  seasons; 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

Beneath  the  stroke  of  life's  changes 
The  mind  that  shaketh  not, 
Without  grief  or  passion,  and  secure; 
This  is  the  greatest  blessing. 

—24— 


THE  GREEK  CONCEPTION  OF  BUDDHA  THE 
ENLIGHTENED  ONE. 

Found  in  Gandhara  and  now  in  the  Museum  at  Calcutta;  presumably  the  oldest  Buddha 
Statue  in  existence.      Second  Century,  B.  C. 

Hy  kiiidptrmittioii  of  the  Open  Court  Pub.  Co. 


On  every  side  are  invincible 
They  who  do  acts  like  these, 
On  every  side  they  walk  in  safety, 
And  this  is  the  greatest  blessing. 


SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS. 

THE  TEN  COMMANDMENTS   OF  THE  BUDDHA. 
(From    the    Buddhist    Bible — "The    Pitakas,"    Mahasudassana-Sutta.) 

1.  Ye  shall  slay  no  living  thing.  2.  Ye  shall  not  take 
that  which  has  not  been  given.  3.  Ye  shall  not  act  wrongly 
touching  the  bodily  desires.  4.  Ye  shall  speak  no  lie.  5.  Ye 
shall  drink  no  maddening  drink.  6.  Accept  no  gold  or  silver. 
7.  Shun  luxurious  beds.  8.  Abstain  from  late  meals.  9. 
Avoid  public  amusements.  10.  Abstain  from  expensive  dress.* 


FROM    THE    "DHAMMAPADA. 
(Corresponding  to  the  "Sermon  on  the  Mount"  In  the  Christian  Bible.) 

Hatred  does  not  cease  by  hatred  at  any  time;  hatred 
ceases  by  love :  this  is  an  old  rule. 

If  one  man  conquer  in  battle  a -thousand  times  a  thou- 
sand men,  and  if  another  conquer  himself,  he  is  the  greatest 
of  conquerors. 

He  who  lives  a  hundred  years,  not  seeing  the  highest 
law,  a  life  of  one  day  is  better,  if  a  man  sees  the  highest  law. 

Let  no  man  think  lightly  of  evil,  saying  in  his  heart,  it  will 
not  come  near  me.  Even  by  the  falling  of  water-drops  a  water- 
pot  is  filled ;  the  fool  becomes  full  of  evil,  even  if  he  gathers  it 
little  by  little. 

Do  not  speak  harshly  to  anybody;  those  who  are  spoken 
to  will  answer  thee  in  that  same  way.  Angry  speech  is  painful, 
blows  for  blows  will  touch  thee. 

If  anything  is  to  be  done,  let  a  man  do  it,  let  him  attack 
it  vigorously. 

Let  each  man  make  himself  as  he  teaches  others  to  be; 
he  who  is  w^ell  subdued  may  subdue  (others) ;  one's  own  self 
is  difficult  to  subdue. 


•  The  first  five  were  imposed  on  both  clergy  and  laity  alike;  the  last 
five  upon  the  clergy  alone  . 

— 25— 


Let  a  man  overcome  anger  by  love,  let  him  overcome  evil 
by  good,  let  him  overcome  the  greedy  by  liberality,  the  liar 
by  truth. 

Speak  the  truth,  do  not  yield  to  anger,  give,  if  thou  art 
asked,  from  the  little  thou  hast;  by  those  steps  thou  will  go 
near  the  gods. 


THE  DISCOURSE. 

"That  path  which  opens  the  eyes,  bestows  understanding  which  leads 
to  peace,  to  the  higher  wisdom,  to  full  enlightenment,  to  Nirvana,  verily, 
It  is  th.e  noble  eight-fold  path." — Dhamma-Kakka  Ppavattana-Sutta.4. 

One-third  of  the  human  race,  four  hundred  and  fifty  mill- 
ion souls,  find  their  strength  and  stay  and  inspiration  in  the 
doctrines  of  Buddhism.  Its  founder  was  Gotama,  the  Buddha ; 
Gotama  being  the  name  of  the  tribe  to  which  his  family  be- 
longed, a  name  as  common  in  India  as  was  the  name  of  Jesus 
in  Palestine.  "Buddha,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  title  of  a 
function  or  office,  corresponding  in  this  respect  to  the  name 
"Christ."  For,  as  the  latter  means  "deliverer,"  or  "anoint- 
ed," so  the  former  signifies  "enlightened."  Other  names  by 
which  the  founder  of  Buddhism  was  called  are:  "Siddartha," 
the  name  given  him  by  his  father;  and  meaning  "he  in  whom 
wishes  are  fulfilled;"  "Cakya-muni,"  or  monk  of  the  Cakya 
order;  "Bhagavat,"  fortunate  one;  "Tathagata,"  as  his  prede- 
cessors. 

He  was  born  about  550  B.  C.  at  Kapilavistu,  some  eighty 
miles  from  Benares,  in  the  valley  of  the  Ganges,  and  his 
parents  were  King  and  Queen  of  Northern  India. 

The  story  of  his  life  has  been  most  charmingly  told  in  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold's  "Light  of  Asia,"  a  poetical  version  that 
makes  free  use  of  legendary  and  mythical  lore  concerning  the 
Buddha,  and  so  presents  the  man  and  his  message  that  the  read- 
er readily  orients  himself  and  enters  into  the  very  heart  of  the 
reformer's  thought  and  spirit.  The  poet's  story  is  one  of  a 
"great  renunciation."  'Tis  the  story  of  a  prince,  born  in  a 
palace,  surrounded  by  luxury,  provided  with  every  available 
source  of  pleasure,  shielded  most  carefully  from  the  sight  of 
sorrow  and  suffering.  But  one  day,  while  driving  in  the  royal 
park,  he  who  had  never  seen  anything  but  health  and  beauty 

—26— 


saw  in  quick  succession  human  forms  that  expressed  old  age, 
disease  and  death.  That  series  of  distressing  sights  marked 
the  turning  point  of  his  life.  Returning  to  the  palace,  he 
resolved  the  same  night  to  discover  the  way  of  escape  from 
sorrow,  sickness,  old  age  and  death.  In  the  fourth  book  of  the 
"Light  of  Asia"  is  the  thrilling  narrative  of  the  circumstances 
of  his  departure  in  the  dead  of  night  to  find  the  supreme  de- 
sideratum of  human  life.  After  six  years  passed  in  study 
among  Hindu  recluses,  the  Buddha  concludes  that  not  in  their 
finespun  speculations  lies  the  way  of  escape.  He  then  turned 
to '  asceticism  as  a  possible  avenue  to  the  way  he  seeks,  but 
almost  loses  his  life  through  the  severe  austerities  to  which  he 
subjected  himself  and  in  vain.  His  third  effort  lay  in  the  direc- 
tion of  meditation  and  aspiration.  Seating  himself  under  a  tree 
(the  sacred  "bodhi-tree"  it  was  afterward  called),  he  gave 
hi  ins  -If  up  to  profound  thought,  vowing  not  to  rise  until  the 
long-sought  solution  was  reached.  There  the  conviction 
dawned  upon  him  that  extinction  of  desire,  lust,  hatred  and 
ignorance  is  the  way  to  salvation,  rather  than  reflection 
and  meditation,  as  taught  by  the  Hinduism  of  his  time. 

And  the  story  reads  that  his  fame  spread  abroad  in  the 
land.  His  anxious  father  and  distracted  wife  got  news  of  his 
noble  work,  and  whpn  he  ^eturns  to  them  he  appears  clad  in 
the  yellow  robe  of  the  monks  of  Cakya,  the  order  he  had 
founded.  Forthwith  father",  wife  and  little  son  unite  in 
joyous  acceptance  of  the  new  way  of  salvation. 

Towards  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  then,  Buddhism 
came  into  being  as  a  new  religion,  and  so  popular  did  it  be- 
come that  in  the  reign  of  King  Asoka,  about  250  B.  C.,  it  was 
made  the  state  religion  of  India.  Then  followed  a  long  and 
obstinate  struggle  for  supremacy  with  the  earlier  religion, 
Brahmanism,  terminating  in  the  expulsion  of  Buddhism  from 
India  to  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  which,  with  Thibet, 
China  and  Japan,  are  the  chief  centers  of  Buddhism  today.  In 
passing  it  should  be  noted  that  among  the  Mongolian  people 
who  have  adopted  Buddhism,  it  has  undergone  considerable 
modification  by  the  introduction  of  strange  superstitions,  in- 
cluding deification  of  the  IJuddha  and  the  worship  of  him  as  a 
god;  even  as  in  Christianity  there  occurred  the  deification  of 

—27— 


Jesus,  within  a  century  of  his  death,  and  forthwith  the  worship 
of  him  as  "coequal  with  the  Father."  While  Heraclitus  and 
Pythagoras,  in  Greece,  were  shaping  their  philosophy,  while 
Ezra  and  Nehemiah  were  reorganizing  the  Hebrew  nation  at 
Jerusalem  after  the  Babylonian  captivity,  and  while  Confucius 
in  China  was  fulfilling  the  part  of  statesman  and  moral  teacher, 
in  India  the  founder  of  Buddhism  was  inaugurating  one  of  the 
first  protestantisms  on  record.  For  Buddhism  arose  as  a  protest 
against  the  Hinduism  of  the  sixth  century  before  our  era,  even 
as  did  the  Christian  Protestantism  of  the  sixteenth  century 
against  the  Catholicism  of  that  time.  Nay,  more,  the  Buddha's 
relation  to  Hinduism  was  like  that  of  Luther  to  Catholicism 
in  so  far  that  both  instituted  their  respective  reforms  from 
within  the  existing  religion.  As  Luther  had  sought  to  remain 
a  Roman  Catholic,  so  Gotama  had  hoped  to  reform  Brahmanism 
without  involving  the  rise  of  a  new,  independent  movement. 
The  nature  of  his  protest  is  understood  when  we  recall  the 
Brahmanic  tendencies  and  developments  of  his  time.  The 
pure,  simple  religion  of  the  "Vedas"  had  given  place  to  an 
elaborate  ceremonial,  with  costly  and  showy  sacrifices;  a  pro- 
gramme of  penances,  austerities  and  meditations;  a  four-fold 
system  of  caste  and  a  succession  of  six  philosophical  schools 
with  their  conflicting  theories  of  the  universe,  God  and  man. 
This  ritualism,  asceticism,  class  distinction  and  intellectualism 
inevitably  provoked  protest.  Siddartha,  himself  a  Hindu, 
trained  in  the  Sankya,  or  rationalistic  school  of  philosophy, 
led  the  protestants.  He  agreed  with  his  Hindu  brethren  that 
the  supreme  desideratum  of  life  is  to  stop  the  process  of  rein- 
carnation, to  get  rid  of  "ceaseless  rebirths,"  but  he  denied 
that  the  way  to  this  cessation  is  by  offering  sacrifices,  by  ascetic 
living,  by  metaphysical  speculating  on  deity  and  destiny.  He 
denied  the  infallibility  and  authority  of  the  Veda  which  en- 
dorsed and  advocated  sacrifices  and  prayers.  He  denounced  the 
bloody  sacrifices  as  cruel  and  inhuman.  He  condemned  the  sys- 
tem of  caste  distinctions  as  degrading  and  undemocratic.  He  re- 
pudiated asceticism  and  self-indulgence  as  fatal  alike  to  health 
of  body  and  mind.  Such  was  the  protest  of  the  Buddha  on  its 
negative  side.  Had  he  stopped  at  these  negations,  no  Buddhism 
would  have  been  born.  All  movements  that  seek  to  subsist  on 

—28— 


negations,  or  on  ieonoclasm,  da-,  as  ilicy  deserve  to,  for  only  on 
affirmations,  on  a  positive  constructive  gospel  can  human  souls 
feed.  For  every  negation,  the  Buddha  offered  a  corresponding 
affirmation.  He  affirmed  that  the  way  to  stop  the  series  of  re- 
births is  by  living  an  absolutely  pure  and  unselfish  life,  by 
practicing  the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  by  choosing  a  middle 
path  between  asceticism  and  self-indulgence.  For  a  dry  theism 
that  had  been  reduced  to  ritualism,  the  Buddha  substituted 
a  fervent  morality.  For  the  undemocratic  system  of  castes  he 
substituted  the  ennobling  inclusive  doctrine  of  brotherhood. 
For  excessive  fasting  and  feasting  he  substituted  temperance, 
enforcing  it  by  his  wonderful  eloquence  and  the  powerful 
magnetism  of  a  great  personality.  For  the  notion  that  the  gods 
in  some  way  and  degree  determine  a  man's  fate,  he  substi- 
tuted the  belief  that  every  man  holds  his  fortune  in  his  own 
hands,  that  each  man  has  his  "Karma."  And  this  doctrine 
may  properly  be  said  to  have  been  the  secret  of  the  hold 
Buddhism  had  on  the  Hindu  population  when  the  struggle 
with  Brahmanism  began.  Briefly  stated,  the  doctrine  of  Kar- 
ma implies  that  all  acts,  like  seeds,  bear  fruit ;  some  soon,  some 
late.  When  a  man  dies,  he  is  born  again  on  earth  into  a  con- 
dition akin  to  heaven  or  hell.  "Which  of  these  two  states  it 
shall  be  depends  upon  the  character  of  his  acts.  In  proportion 
to  the  amount  of  sin  and  goodness  he  has  registered,  so  will 
his  retribution  and  reward  be,  the  reincarnation  taking  on  a 
correspondingly  low  or  high  plane.  Neither  gods  nor  men  can 
escape  this  law  of  Karma,  or  consequences.  If  a  man  be  re- 
born into  a  heavenly  condition,  life  therein  will  be  continued 
until  his  good  actions  have  been  completely  rewarded.  But 
he  may  thereupon  be  born  into  a  hell-state  for  some  evil  action 
done  in  an  earlier  existence.  And,  since  he  cannot  remember 
any  of  his  past  states,  he  cannot  remember  any  of  his  good 
or  bad  acts,  and  therefore  cannot  know  what  sort  of  a  future 
is  before  him.  Let  him,  however,  follow  desire,  and  he 
will  meet  the  consequences;  let  him  follow  unselfishness,  and 
the  effects  of  following  desire  will  be  gradually  paid  off  in 
successive  reincarnations  till  ultimately  he  attains  the  peace 
that  passeth  understanding — Nirvana.  Every  action  produces 

—29— 


a  "samskara"  or  "memory-structure"  or  "soul-form,"  and 
the  preservation  of  the  samskaras  of  all  past  Karmas  makes 
rebirth  possible  and  constitutes  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
and  its  evolution  to  ever  higher  planes  of  being  until  at  length, 
after  countless  rebirths,  Nirvana  is  attained. 

Such,  in  brief,  on  its  constructive  side  was  the  gospel  of 
Gotama.  And  this  protest  of  the  Buddha,  in  its  negative  and 
affirmative  aspects,  makes  him,  so  far  as  we  know,  the  first 
Hindu  radical,  the  first  Indian  iconoclast,  the  first  positivist, 
the  first  prophet  of  faith  built  on  reason,  of  religion  rooted  in 
science  or  exact  knowledge  of  what  is.  In  his  dying  hour 
Gotama  urged  his  disciples  to  rely  on  their  own  minds  and  not 
on  the  Vedas  in  searching  for  truth.  "Rely  not  on  others, 
rely  not  on  me ;  hold  fast  to  the  truth  as  to  a  lamp  and  avoid 
dogmatic  theorizing,  which  is  a  jungle,  a  wilderness,  a  puppet- 
show,  a  fetter."  This  was  his  final  appeal. 

As  we  went  to  the  "Vedas"  to  learn  what  the  gospel  of 
Hinduism  is,  so  also,  do  we  go  to  the  "Pitakas"  for  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  gospel  of  Buddhism.  The  word  "Pitaka"  means 
basket,  and  there  were  in  all  three  baskets,  the  "Tripitaka," 
namely,  "Vinaya,"  or  rules  of  discipline,  "Dhamma,"  or 
ethical  sermons  of  the  Buddha  preached  in  the  course  of  forty 
years,  and  "Abhiddhamma, "  or  the  metaphysical  parts  of  the 
master's  teaching.  All  these  scriptures  were,  like  the  Vedas, 
memorized  by  disciples  and  transmitted  orally  from  generation 
to  generation  till  the  year  260  B.  C.,  when  King  Asoka,  the 
Constantine  of  Buddhism,  ordered  the  sacred  scriptures  to  be 
committed  to  writing.  The  language  in  which  they  were  writ- 
ten is  that  which  the  Buddha  spoke,  the  "Pali"  dialect,  which 
is  related  to  Sanskrit  as  is  Italian  to  Latin,  and  this  language 
being  therefore  sacred  to  Buddhists,  the  manuscripts  of  the 
"Pitakas"  have  not  been  tampered  with  to  the  extent  we  are 
familiar  with  in  the  case  of  the  Christian  and  Jewish  manu- 
scripts. 

Turning,  then,  to  the  Bible  of  Buddhism  we  find  its 
gospel  recorded  in  the  founder's  words.  It  consists  of 
four  "noble  truths"  upon  which  Buddhists  of  whatever 
sect  or  nation  are  agreed:  First,  the  noble  truth  about  sor- 

—30— 


row,  namely  that  it  exists  and  that  rebirth  is  dreaded  because 
it  involves  a  rebirth  of  sorrow.  Second,  the  noble  truth  about 
the  cause  of  sorrow,  namely,  that  it  is  caused  by  desire,  lust, 
ignorance,  hatred.  Third,  the  noble  truth  about,  the  removal 
of  sorrow,  namely,  that  the  removal  of  the  cause  of  sorrow 
brings  the  cessation  of  sorrow.  Fourth,  the  noble  truth  about 
the  path  that  leads  to  the  cessation  of  sorrow,  namely,  the 
noble  eight-fold  path,  to-wit:  Right  views,  right  aspirations, 
right  speech,  right  conduct,  right  livelihood,  right  effort,  right 
mindfulness  and  right  meditation.  How  tame  all  this 
must  have  sounded  to  a  people  steeped  in  sacrifices,  penances, 
austerities,  castes  and  speculation.  How  tame,  perchance,  it 
sounds  to  those  of  us  who  know  not  the  wonderful  wealth  of 
moral  and  spiritual  significance  contained  in  each  of  the  con- 
stituent parts  of  this  noble  eight-fold  path.  Read  the  186 
dialogues  in  which  the  Buddha  has  expounded  the  depth  of 
meaning  in  these  eight  requirements.  For  one,  I  cannot  resist 
the  conviction,  after  reading  the  dialogues,  that  if  Jesus  could 
have  heard  the  Buddha's  exposition  of  the  noble  eightfold 
path  he  would  have  said,  "brother,  thou  art  not  far  from  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  That  you  may  have  some  conception  of 
what  is  involved  in  the  pathway  to  "Nivana" — the  blessed 
state  in  which  rebirth  is  no  more — let  me  synopsize  the 
content  of  the  first  of  the  eight  needs,  "right  views,  expounded 
by  the  Buddha  in  the  forty-third  dialogue  and  a  little  more 
briefly  in  the  ninth.  The  man  of  right  views  understands  what 
is  evil  and  what  is  good  and  the  roots  of  each.  He  knows  the 
bases  of  bodily  and  mental  life,  how  they  arise  and  afterwards 
cease.  As  a  result,  he  gets  rid  of  sensuality  and  ill-will  toward 
others.  Moreover,  he  knows  what  sorrow  is,  its  origin  and  ces- 
sation, how  it  is  bound  up  with  the  temporary  individuality 
resulting  from  the  evanescent  union  of  the  five  "skandas"  or 
groups  of  qualities  that  make  up  each  individual;  he  knows 
how  sorrow  results  from  craving  and  how  it  ceases  in  Nirvana. 
Again,  he  knows  what  old  age  and  death  mean,  how  both  of 
them  came  from  birth  and  how  both  are  overcome  byArahfttship 
the  soul-condition  in  which  one  is  prepared  to  enter  Nirvana. 
He  knows  about  birth  and  becoming,  about  the  lust  and 
thirst  from  which  they  proceed  and  how  all  these  cease  in 

—31— 


Arahatship.  and  he  knows,  too,  about  the  sensations  and  the 
ideas  that  follow  thereon,  how  they  arise  and  to  what  they 
lead  and  when  he  knows  all  this,  then  is  his  insight  right,  his 
views  are  correct  and  the  man  is  endowed  with  an  abiding 
sense  of  truth. 

Thus  the  note  sounded  by  Buddhism  is  renunciation, 
renounce  desire,  lust,  ignorance,  hatred  and  escape  from  sor- 
row and  rebirth  is  secured. 

Like  Hinduism,  Buddhism  begins  with  right  knowledge  as 
the  prime  essential,  but  it  is  not  right  views  of  God,  or  of 
prayer,  or  of  the  hereafter  that  are  deemed  of  first  rate  import 
ance ;  rather  is  it  right  views  of  men  and  of  things  as  they  are 
here  and  now.  To  this  need  of  right  knowledge  Buddhism 
added  the  necessity  of  purity,  of  integrity,  or  courtesy,  of 
humaneness,  of  peace  and  of  a  universal  love.  So  bent  was 
the  Buddha  on  turning  people's  thoughts  away  from  theistic 
speculation  and  theorizing  about  a  hereafter,  of  which  nothing 
is  really  known,  to  the  crying  moral  and  social  needs  of  the  liv- 
ing present,  that  when  his  disciples  pressed  him  for  an  answer 
to  the  question,  what  is  Nirvana?  he  refused  to  answer  and 
turned  their  thoughts  back  to  the  path  that  necessarily  leads 
to  Nirvana,  saying,  this  is  your  only  practical  concern.  Simi- 
larly he  was  averse  to  discussing  the  theistic  problem.  Indeed, 
the  Buddhism  of  Gotama  was  practically  atheistic  in  that  the 
God-idea  is  given  no  presentation,  and  only  when  he 
himself  had  been  raised  to  the  rank  of  a  God  did  his  ethical 
religion  meet  with  any  great  degree  of  popular  acceptance. 
Buddhists  praised  and  adored  his  memory.  They  made  images 
of  him  in  various  forms  placing  them  in  temples  and  at  road- 
sides— a  practice  which  Hinduism  borrowed  from  its  rival.  To 
Gotama  the  Buddhist  offers  no  prayer,  because  he  is  in  Nirvana. 
Only  to  the  gods  of  the  Hindu  pantheon,  which  "passably  good 
Buddhists"  (as  they  came  to  be  called)  believe  in,  was  pnivcr 
offered.  But  the  Buddhism  of  the  founder  recognized  no 
supreme  deity,  only  the  gods  of  the  Hindu  pantheon;  but  these 
he  considered  finite,  subject  to  Karma  and  the  process  of  re- 
births. The  place  above  all  these  finite  deities  ho  left  vacant. 
"Better,"  he  said,  "homage  to  a  man  grounded  in  the  Dharn- 
ma,  than  to  Agni  for  a  hundred  years." 

—32— 


Thus  the  ethics  of  Buddhism  is  at  once  intensely  prac- 
tical and  thoroughly  humanitarian.  On  the  other  hand  its 
philosophy  of  life  is  essentially  pessimistic.  This  world  is  evil, 
it  is  "  Maya, ' '  illusion.  To  find  a  way  of  escape  from  it  therefore 
becomes  man's  chief  end  and  aim.  The  way  is  found  by  living 
the  most  completely  unselfish  life  possible;  renouncing  desire, 
accepting  the  four  noble  truths  and  taking  the  eightfold  noble 
path  which  leads  to  the  cessation  of  rebirths  and  the  absolute 
rest  of  Nirvana.  No  wonder  that  Buddhism  has  been  called 
"the  religion  of  organized  weariness."  If  conscious  personal 
survival  be  involved  in  the  meaning  of  Nirvana  and  on  this 
the  authorities  still  differ  while  the  founder  himself  was  non- 
committal— then  assuredly  Nirvana  at  best  can  be  no  more 
than  a  temporary  resting  place  for  tired  souls,  who  will  wish 
to  take  the  path  of  the  more  abundant  life  when  rested  and 
refreshed.  The  "peace  that  passeth  understanding"  is  not 
statical,  not  stagnation,  not  simple,  aimless  rest,  but  new  op- 
portunity for  putting  forth  more  of  the  infinite  possibilities  of 
the  spirit,  in  thought  and  love  and  action.  Unless  man's 
"heaven"  means  room  for  such  growth,  which  is  life,  it 
would  not  be  desirable.  What  the  soul  wants  is  life,  life  ever 
more  abundantly  and  no  Nirvana  could  permanently  satisfy 
the  soul  except  as  it  made  provision  for  that  growth  which  is 
life. 

Finally  it  must  be  said  that  by  fixing  attention  on  this  life 
and  its  pressing  moral  and  social  needs,  by  refusing  to  answer 
questions  regarding  another  life  which  did  not  practically  con- 
cern him,  by  laying  emphasis  on  character  as  more  than  creed, 
on  virtue  as  more  than  theosophizing,  on  temperance  as  more 
than  asceticism  or  self-indulgence ;  by  holding  up  the  broth- 
erhood of  man  as  the  ideal  human  relationship,  by  teaching 
that  every  man  must  "work  out  his  own  salvation  with  dili- 
gence," Gotama  performed  an  indispensable  service  in  the 
evolution  of  Aryan  religion  and  bequeathed  to  the  race  precepts 
and  an  example  of  renunciation  that  will  be  an  inspiration  for 
all  time. 


-33 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  ZOROASTRIANISM. 
POEM. 

A  ZOROASTRIAN  PSALM. 
(From  the  "A vesta.") 

Teach  me  to  know  thy  laws,  O  Lord. 

That  I  may  walk  by  the  help  of  thy  pure  spirit. 

Sim  and  stars,  clouds  and  mountains,  all  move  to  Thy  praise,  O 

righteous  Ahura  Mazda. 
And  I,  with  my  mouth,  will  sing  Thy  praise  as  long  as  I  have 

breath. 

Turn  not  away  from  the  three  best  things ; 
Right  thoughts,  right  words,  right  deeds. 
He  who  knows  purity  knows  Ahura  Mazda. 
To  such  is  He  father,  brother,  friend. 
Praise  be  to  the  name  of  Ahura, 
Who  always  was,  who  is  and  ever  shall  be. 

SCRIPTURE    SELECTION. 
FROM   THE  ZOROASTRIAN  BIBLE. 

(Fron?    the    "Gathas,"    the    oldest    portion    of    the    Zoroastrian    Bible,    the 

"Avesta." 

Now  will  I  proclaim  to  you  who  are  drawing  near  and  seek- 
ing to  be  taught,  those  animadversions  which  pertain  to  Him 
who  knows  all  things.  Hear  ye  then  with  your  ears  and  be  ye 
wakeful,  for  I  will  tell  you  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Creator  and 
sing  hymns  to  the  Mighty  One.  In  the  beginning  there  were 
two  principles,  twins,  the  good  and  the  evil.  Side  with  one 
of  these ;  both  ye  cannot  belong  to.  Choose  ye  to  be  good  and 
not  base.  Between  the  opposing  spirits  let  the  wisely-acting 
choose  aright ;  choose  ye  not  as  the  evil-doers.  Splendid  things 
are  garnered  up  for  residence  in  the  good  mind.  Wisdom  is 
the  shelter  from  lies,  the  destroyer  of  evil  spirits.  The  prudent 
man  wishes  to  be  only  where  wisdom  dwells.  May  we  be  such 
as  those  who  make  this  world  progressive,  till  its  perfection 
shall  have  been  reached.  And  when  perfection  shall  have  been 
attained,  then  shall  the  blow  of  destruction  fall  upon  the  Demon 
of  falsehood,  but  swiftest  in  the  happy  abode  of  the  good  mind 

—34— 


ZOROASTER. 

Copied  from  a  Bas-relief  at  Persepolis.     Examples  of  Persian  Iconography  in  "  Early 
Sassanian  Inscriptions,"  by  Edw.  Thomas,  F.  R.  S. 

Hy  kind  jttt  mission  of  the  Opfii  d.urt  Pub.  Co. 


of  Ahura,  the  righteous  saints  shall  gather,  they  who  proceed 
in  their  walk  on  earth  in  good  repute  and  honor.  Wherefore, 
O  ye  men  learn  the  blessings  that  are  in  store  for  the  righteous. 

(Yasna  xxx.) 

PRAYER. 

With  venerating  desire  for  the  gift  of  Thy  gracious  helpr 
O  Lord,  and  stretching  forth  my  hands  to  Thee,  I  pray  for  the 
blessing  of  Thy  bountiful  spirit.  May  my  actions  toward  all 
men  be  performed  in  the  Divine  Righteousness.  Inspired  by 
Thy  benevolent  Mind,  may  I  possess  those  attainments  which 
are  to  be  derived  from  the  Divine  Righteousness.  Do  Thou,  0 
Lord,  the  Great  Creator,  come  to  me  with  Thy  good  mind  and 
do  thou  who  bestowest  gifts  through  Thy  Righteousness,  be- 
stow alike  long-lasting  life  on  us.  And  in  order  that  this  life 
may  be  spent  aright,  do  Thou  bestow  the  needed  powerful  spir- 
itual help,  not  for  a  time  alone,  but  for  all  the  ages. 

(Yasna,  xxviii.) 

THE  DISCOURSE. 

"HFMATA,  HFKHTA,  HAVARSHTA." 
<Good    thoughts,    good    words,    good    deeds.) — A  vesta. 

Tin-  various  races  of  the  earth  may  be  traced  to  one  or  the 
other  of  three  primordial  gro.ups.  Aryan.  Semitic,  Turanian. 
The  Aryans  dwelt  about  the  sources  of  the  Oxus.  on  the  table- 
lands of  Central  Asia.  Thence  spread  in  seven  successive  mi- 
grations the  tribes  that  peopled  Europe  and  most  of  Asia.  Of 
these  migrations  the  two  earliest  were  to  India  and  to  Persia. 
Hence  the  primitive  Aryan  n-ligion  diverged  at  this  time  in 
two  distinct  directions,  resulting  in  the  religion  of  ancient 
India  and  the  religion  of  ancient  Persia. 

Persia's  place  among  the  nations  of  antiquity  was  second 
only  to  that  of  Greece  and  Rome.  In  the  fifth  century  before 
our  era  Persia  had  come  into  possession  of  Assyria  and  Baby- 
lonia. She  held  the  Hebrews  in  captivity  abroad  and  under 
Persian  sway  at  home.  Edicts,  dictating  various  policies,  po- 
litical, social,  religious,  were  sent  from  the  Persian  capital  to 
Scythia.  India,  Egypt  and  Greece.  So  great  indeed  was  Persia's 
power  that  the  late  Max  Mueller,  commenting  upon  it,  de- 

—35— 


dared  .that  if  the  battles  of  Salamis  and  Marathon  had  been 
lost  and  Greece  been  conquered  by  Persia,  Zoroastrianism, 
which  was  the  state  religion  of  the  Persian  empire,  would  have 
become  the  religion  of  the  civilized  world.  If,  by  the  grace  of 
God,  of  Ahura  Mazda,  Darius  had  been  victorious  over  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  the  Olympian  deities  and  myths  would  have 
given  place  to  the  purer  faith  of  Zoroaster.  A  thousand  years 
later,  Persia  was  again  in  the  ascendant,  till  the  year  641,  when 
the  Mohammedans  established  Islam  where  Zoroastrianism  II.-K! 
reigned.  The  great  majority  of  the  faithful,  refusing  to  adopt 
the  new  religion,  were  exiled  and  found  refuge  in  the  presidency 
of  Bombay.  There  today  one  may  see  most  of  the  100,000  souls 
who  are  descendants  of  these  exiles,  a  people  world-renowned 
for  their  intellectual  and  moral  worth  and  for  the  perfervid  en- 
thusiasm with  which  they  perpetuate  the  religion  of  their 
fathers ;  a  religion  that  has  contributed  to  Christianity,  through 
Judaism,  several  important  doctrines;  a  religion,  moreover,  Hint 
has  left  its  solemn  record  not  only  in  the  pages  of  the  "  Avesta" 
or  Zoroastrian  Bible,  not  only  on  the  giant  ruins  at  Persepolis 
with  their  suggestive  inscriptions  touching  the  character  of 
those  who  espoused  that  religion,  but  also  in  the  high-toned 
lives  of  the  Parsee  colony  in  Bombay. 

Carlyle  once  said  "great  men  have  short  biographies," 
but  of  Zoroaster  we  have  no  authentic  biography  at  all.  Less 
is  known  of  him  than  of  any  other  of  the  world's  great  religious 
teachers.  Meagre  as  is  the  authentic,  undisputed  information 
we  have  concerning  the  life  of  Jesus,  what  we  positively  know 
concerning  Zoroaster  is  still  less.  We  do  not  even  know  bis 
name,  for  Zoroaster  or  Zarathustra,  is  the  title  of  an  office  or 
function,  precisely  as  are  the  names  "Christ"  and  "Buddha," 
the  former  signifying  "deliverer,"  the  latter,  " enlightener. " 
Zoroaster  means  "excellent  singer"  and  the  name  '"Qpitama," 
often  applied  to  the  founder  of  Parsism,  means  "sacred." 
Again,  of  his  birthplace  we  know  not  the  town,  only  the  pro- 
vince. Bactria,  it  was  called,  in  ancient  times ;  on  the  modern 
map  it  is  Afghanistan.  Nor,  again,  do  we  know  the  date  of 
his  birth.  It  has  been  set  as  far  back  as  6000  B.  C.  and  as  far 
forward  as  300  B.  C.,  but  the  most  generally  accepted  belief 
among  scholars  is  that  Zoroaster  was  a  contemporary  of  David 

—36— 


and  Solomon  and  therefore  ilourlbhed  about  the  year  1000 
B.  C.  From  the  Avesta  we  learn  that  Zoroaster  was  a  husband 
and  a  father,  a  warrior  and  a  farmer.  In  his  capacity  as  founder 
of  the  faith  that  bears  his  name  we  learn  that  he  was  the  first 
annunciator  of  the  great  moral  triad  which  forms  the  corner- 
stone of  the  faith,  "humata,  hukhta,  hvarshta;"  good  thoughts, 
irood  words,  good  deeds.  He  was,  moreover,  the  first  priest  of 
the  sacred  fire.  Just  here  let  me  interject  a  word  of  caution. 
Do  not  commit  the  popular  mistake  of  supposing  that  the 
Parsees  are  fire-worshippers.  That  would  be  as  serious  an 
error  as  to  think  the  Buddhists  idol-worshippers.  As  their  idols 
are  merely  aids  to  spiritual  concentration  upon  the  immediate 
object  of  their  worship  so  to  the  Parsees  fire  serves  a  similar 
helpful  purpose.  To  them  fire  is  the  most  perfect  symbol  of 
deity  they  know.  Its  refulgence,  its  purity,  its  power,  its  in- 
corruptibility, its  glory;  all  suggest  the  nature  of  deity  and 
consequently  the  sacred  flame  is  ever  kept  burning  as  a  help- 
ful symbol  of  their  God  when  concentrating  thought  upon  him 
and  his  attributes.  As  well  speak  of  Christians  being  cross- 
worshippers  as  to  say  of  the  Parsees  they  are  fire-worshippers. 
The  lamented  Jeneghier  D.  Cola,  of  Bombay,  once  quoted  for 
me,  when  discussing  with  him  this  subject,  a  sentence  that 
states  very  tersely  and  clearly  the  truth  regarding  the 
Zoroastrian 's  use  of  fire  when  worshipping  his  God.  "While 
our  eyes  are  fixed  on  the  sacred  fire  our  hearts  are  humbled 
before  God."  This  choice  of  fire  as  the  supreme  symbol  of  deity 
illustrates  very  forcibly  the  influence  of  environment  upon  re- 
ligious sentiments  and  ideas.  Iran,  the  official  name  of  Persia, 
was  a  veritable  fire-country,  bespread  with  naphtha  springs, 
meteoric  lights  and  burning  mountains.  Even  to  this  day  the 
hot  winds  parch  the  dry  grass,  needing  but  a  spark  to  set  it  all 
ablaze.  In  such  a  country,  therefore,  no  symbolism  could  have 
been  more  natural,  spontaneous  and  inevitable  than  that  of  fire. 

Just  what  the  actual  causes  were  that  led  to  the  separation 
of  Zoroaster  and  his  followers  from  their  Aryan  brethren  is  in 
large  measure  an  open  question.  From  various  passages  in 
the  Avesta  we  are  led  to  infer  that  Zoroaster  did  not  agree  with 
those  of  his  Aryan  compatriots  who  held  sacrifices,  penances 
and  fasting  to  be  of  paramount  importance  in  religion,  with 

—37— 


those  who  looked  on  prayer  as  an  end  in  itself  and  who  felt  it 
right  to  pass  half  the  day  in  begging  food  that  the  remainder 
might  be  passed  under  a  shady  tree  in  undisturbed  medita- 
tion and  prayer.  From  all  this  Zoroaster  recoiled,  claiming 
that  prayer  should  always  be  a  means  never  an  end,  that 
work  is  the  completing  of  prayer,  the  hands  fulfilling  the 
prayer  of  the  heart,  that  industry  is  more  than  meditation  and 
settled  agricultural  life  better  than  wandering  nomadic  life. 
Such  were  the  affirmations  which  supplemented  the  negations 
of  Zoroaster's  protest  and  all  those  who  agreed  with  him  settled 
down  to  farming  life  on  the  plains  of  Iran  and  under  the  in- 
spiration of  a  great  saying  which  Zoroaster  declared  had  been 
revealed  to  him  by  Ahura-Mazda.  "Four  places  on  earth  are 
most  dear  to  God.  First,  where  the  sacred  fire  burns.  Second, 
where  homes  are  established  with  wife  and  children,  with  fire 
and  plenty.  Third,  where  the  most  corn  and  fruit  are  produced. 
Fourth,  where  dry  land  is  watered  and  marshy  land  drained." 
What  a  mighty  inspiration  it  must  have  been  to  these  people, 
who  had  settled  on  a  soil  that  required  persistent  and  most 
arduous  labor  of  irrigating  and  tilling  to  make  it  productive 
and  life-sustaining,  to  hear  that  the  chosen  place  of  their 
abode  was  most  pleasing  to  their  God.  That  Zoroastrianism 
should  teach  the  dignity  of  toil,  the  sacred  efficacy  of  hard 
work  was  but  natural.  Turn  to  the  teachings  of  Zoroaster 
and  his  successors  as  recorded  in  the  Avesta  and  note  the  re- 
iterated emphasis  on  work  as  a  sacred  duty.  I  quote  a  few 
sentences  selected  at  random  from  that  portion  of  the  Parsee 
Bible  which  contains  most  of  the  practical  precepts  of  the  great 
teacher  and  is  called  the  "Vendidad:" 

"Indulge  not  in  slothful  sleep  lest  the  good  work  which 
needs  to  be  done,  remain  undone.  The  cock  lifts  up  his  voice 
with  every  splendid  dawn  and  cries:  Arise  ye  men  and  so 
destroy  the  demon  who  would  put  back  the  world  in  sleep. 
Long  sleeping  becomes  you  not;  arise,  'tis  day — who  rises  first 
comes  first  to  paradise. 

In  whom  does  the  Lord  rejoice?  In  him  who  adorns  the 
earth  with  grain  and  grass  and  fruit  trees,  who  dries  up  moist 
lands  and  waters  dry  places.  He  who  tills  the  ground  is  ,is 
good  a  servant  of  religion  as  he  who  offors  ten  thousand 

—38— 


prayers.  He  is  a  holy  man  who  has  built  a  home  in  which  are 
wife  and  children  and  the  sacred  fire.  Whoso  cultivates  barley, 
cultivates  virtue.  When  the  wheat  appears  the  demons  hiss 
and  when  the  grain  is  ripe  they  flee  in  rage  and  despair.  He 
who  does  not  eat  has  no  strength  to  live  rightly  nor  to  work. 
To  become  enervated  is  the  nature  of  a  demon. 

(Vendidad,  xviii,  iii.) 

Thus  the  emphasis  of  the  Zoroastrian  ethics  is  on  work  and 
these  passages  plainly  show  us  why  work  was  regarded  as  a 
sacred  duty.  Simply  because  work  is  the  most  powerful  instru- 
ment for  destroying  the  power  of  the  demons  and  above  all, 
the  arch-demon,  "Ahriman,"  source  and  maintainer  of  all  that 
is  evil  in  the  world.  Zoroaster  taught  that  this  world  is  under 
the  immediate  control  of  two  principles  or  forces,  the  good  one, 
Qpenta  Mainyus,  and  the  evil  one,  Angro-Mainyus,  or  Ahriman. 
The  good  principle,  or  spirit,  created  the  world  and  man ;  then 
the  evil  one  crept  in  and  marred  the  creation  and  ever  since  a 
war  has  been  on  between  these  opposing  powers ;  the  good  one 
ultimately  to  triumph  over  his  adversary  and  become  converted 
to  goodness  himself.  Not  the  annihilation  but  the  conversion 
of  the  Satan  of  the  Parsee  faith  is  what  the  followers  of  Zoro- 
aster anticipate.  In  other  words,  there  is  but  one  living  God, 
Ahura  Mazda,  omnipresent,  omniscient,  but  not  as  yet  omni- 
potent; for  coeval  with  him2  though  not  coeternal  with  him 
lives  Ahriman,  limiting  still  the  power  of  the  good  spirit,  but 
destined  eventually  to  be  conquered.  Hence  the  deepest  prayer 
of  the  Zoroastrian  is,  "May  Ahura-Mazda  rule  at  will  all 
creatures."  But  not  till  the  advent  of  the  milennium  can  that 
prayer  be  fulfilled,  for  God  will  rule  "at  will"  all  creatures 
only  when  evil  shall  be  no  more.  Thus  the  Zoroastrian  religion 
is  not  dualistic  in  the  sense  of  recognizing  two  deities  because 
it  recognizes  but  one  supreme  God  Ahura  Mazda  and  teaches 
adoration  of  Him  and  the  six  lofty  spirits  (Amesha-Cpentas) 
subject  unto  Him.  Zoroastrianism  is  dualistic  only  in  the 
sense  of  placing  in  pronounced  antithesis  two  separate  king- 
doms, the  one  of  light,  truth,  purity,  the  other  of  darkness, 
error  and  evil.  And  the  ever-present  sense  of  this  dualism,  of 
the  antithetical  forces  of  light  and  darkness,  truth  and  false- 
hood, purity  and  impurity,  is  the  note  sounded  by  Zoroastrian- 

—39— 


ism  and  contributed  to  the  symphony  of  Universal  Religion. 
This  world  then,  according  to  Parsism,  is  a  great  battlefield  on 
which  the  contending  forces  of  good  and  evil  are  at  war  and 
the  weapons  wielded  by  the  good  are  not  swords  but  plough- 
shares, not  guns,  but  "good  thoughts,  good  words,  good  deeds." 
In  answer  to  the  first  question  of  the  old  catechism,  "wh.tl  is 
the  chief  end  of  man,"  the  Zoroastrian  answer  is,  the  conquest 
of  evil  by  work  which  shall  keep  pure  the  earth,  the  body, 
the  soul.  The  earth  is  the  pure  creation  of  God ;  keep  it  pure 
by  tilling  it  and  allowing  no  noxious  weeds  to  grow.  Water  is 
a  pure  creation  of  God;  do  not  pollute  it;  never  wash  your 
hands  or  linen  in  a  running  stream.  If  you  see  a  corpse  floating 
on  a  river,  remove  it  lest  the  water  become  polluted.  Air  is 
a  pure  creation  of  God;  keep  it  pure  by  ventilation,  by  dissi- 
pating noxious  gases  and  destroying  noxious  insects.  Fire 
is  a  pure  creation  of  God ;  keep  'it  pure.  Do  not  burn  a  dead 
body  lest  you  pollute  the  fire.  Do  not  bury  it,  else  you  pollute 
the  earth.  How,  then,  do  the  Parsees  dispose  of  their  dead? 
On  the  "Towers  of  Silence,"  a  four-walled  enclosure,  open  to 
the  sky;  there  vultures  congregate  and  devour  the  bodies  of 
the  dead. 

In  addition  to  the  gospel  of  purity  and  work  as  agencies 
for  the  annihilation  of  evil  and  the  conversion  of  Ahriiuan, 
Zoroastrianism  sets  forth  an  elaborate  and  detailed  system  of 
ceremonial  aiming  at  the  maintenance  of  purity.  This  we  find 
recorded  in  the  books  of  the  Avesta  known  as  the  "Vendidad" 
and  the  "Vispered."  All  this  ceremonial  and  ethical  purity, 
then,  was  intended  simply  as  an  engine  for  the  extermination 
of  evil,  for  the  ultimate  conquest  of  Ahriman  and  his  hosts  of 
attendant  demons.  Every  stroke  of  work  is  a  stroke  that 
means  some  measure  of  defeat  for  Ahriman.  Every  utterance 
of  the  moral  triad  and  of  the  various  names  of  Ahura  Mazda 
is  a  blow  dealt  at  the  evil  one.* 

This  emphasis  on  work,  on  the  sacred  efficacy  of  work, 
necessarily  made  Zoroastrianism  prohibit  fasting,  self-torturo, 
austerities,  excessive  grief,  everything  calculated  to  enervate 
the  body,  or  reduce  the  power  of  the  will.  According  to  this 
religion  the  deadliest  of  sins  is  suicide,  because  no  one  should 
ever  allow  the  sacred  flame  of  enthusiasm  over  the  conquest  of 

*See  the  Ormuzd  Yast,   "Sacred  Books  of  the  East,"  Vol.  xxlil,  pp.  26-29. 

—40— 


evil  to  die  out  in  his  heart  or  to  reduce  by  even  one  soldier 
the  valiant  army  of  warriors  battling  against  evil  and  sin.  The 
first  three  virtues  of  this  religion  are  these :  Speaking  the 
truth,  keeping  one's  promises  and  keeping  out  of  debt.  Ahri- 
man  is  the  father  of  falsehood  and  deceit,  and  every  truthful 
word  tends  toward  his  conversion.  So  with  unreliability  and 
getting  into  debt.  These  sins,  too,  are  the  joy  of  Ahriman  and 
tend  to  lengthen  his  days  of  power  and  must,  therefore,  be 
sedulously  shunned. 

Such  is  the  glorious  and  inspiring  gospel  of  Zoroastrianism. 
To  every  man  and  woman  it  says :  You  are  a  child  of  God ;  by 
birthright  you  belong  to  the  kingdom  of  the  good.  You  were 
created  a  free  moral  agent  and,  therefore,  you  have  liberty  to 
choose  between  good  and  evil.  But  on  your  choice  will  depend 
your  salvation  and  the  joy  of  sharing  the  ultimate  victory 
of  the  good.  Moreover,  the  strictest  account  is  kept  in  heaven 
of  all  you  do  and  say,  and  on  the  judgment-day  your  thoughts, 
words  and  deeds  will  be  weighed  in  the  balance  and  your  future 
destiny  in  hell  or  heaven  decided.  Of  that  destiny  a  detailed 
description  is  furnished  in  the  twenty-second  Yast  of  the 
Avesta.  Therefore,  it  behooves  you  to  choose  the  good  life. 
To  help  guide  you  in  making  that  choice,  Zoroaster  was  sent, 
teaching  that  God's  will  is  the  victory  of  the  good  and  that 
c;ich  soul  should  do  physical  and  moral  work  as  a  co-operator 
with  God  in  the  gigantic,  age-long  task  of  redeeming  the  world. 
Hence,  the  Parsee's  highest  inspiration  in  the  conduct  of  life 
is  the  thought  that  he  is  a  co-operator  with  God  in  the  battle 
;i'_r;iinst  evil  and  sin  and  destined  to  share  the  joys  of  victory 
in  store  for  all  who  fight  on  the  side  of  Ahura-Mazda,  sovereign 
Lord. 

What  a  contrast  between  this  gospel  of  "up  and  doing" 
and  the  gospel  of  meditations,  penances,  fastings,  inculcated 
by  Brahmanism  when  the  Buddha  came  to  institute  reform! 
What  a  contrast,  too,  between  the  optimistic  aim  of  Zoroaster, 
to  overcome  evil,  and  the  pessimistic  aim  of  the  Buddha  to 
overcome  existence,  seeing  that  the  practically  endless  series 
of  rebirths  means  rebirth  of  suffering  and  sorrow. 

How  successful  Zoroaster  was  with  his  gospel  is  evidenced, 
first,  in  the  writings  of  the  historian  Herodotus,  who  speaks 

—41— 


In  the  highest  terms  of  the  nobility  and  purity  of  the  Parsees 
in  the  reign  of  Darius.  It  is  evidenced  next  in  the  lives  of  the 
10,000  living  in  Afghanistan  and  the  90,000  residing 
in  Bombay.  Travelers  tell  us  that  these  communities  exemplify 
the  teachings  of  Zoroaster  to  a  most  remarkable  degree.  Truth- 
fulness, temperance,  industriousness,  commercial  integrity  and 
chastity,  they  say,  are  strikingly  exhibited  among  them.  One 
does  not  meet  with  drunken  men  or  with  ' '  women  of  the  town ' ' 
— the  degraded  creatures  that  are  seen  on  the  streets  of  every 
Christian  city.  As  for  the  generosity  of  the  Parsees,  it  is  un- 
rivalled, extending  far  beyond  the  limits  of  Bombay ;  to  Russia, 
at  the  time  of  the  Crimean  war,  so  that  Florence  Nightingale 
spoke  of  the  Parsee  colony  as  ' '  the  salt  of  the  Bombay  commun- 
ity;" to  France,  in  1859,  when  the  terrible  inundation  created 
the  need  for  foreign  help,  and  the  Parsees  were  among  the  first 
and  most  liberal  contributors ;  to  the  United  States,  at  the  time 
of  the  civil  war,  the  sanitary  commission  having  received  a 
handsome  remembrance  from  the  Parsees,  sent  because  of  their 
deep  sympathy  with  the  suffering  soldiers  and  with  the  cause 
of  freedom  and  of  union.  A  decade  or  so  ago  George  Peabody 
was  said  to  hold  the  record  for  generous  giving  to  charity  by 
his  gift  of  half  a  million  dollars,  but  the  record  was  broken 
by  a  Parsee,  who  gave  three  and  a  half  million  dollars  to  charity. 

Such  are  some  of  the  practical  results  of  the  gospel  of  him 
whose  name  we  do  not  know,  whose  birthplace  and  birthday  we 
do  not  know,  the  details  of  whose  career  we  do  not  know,  yet 
who  exerted  an  influence  that  has  been  felt  for  twenty  centuries 
or  more.  From  his  mind  and  heart  has  flowed  a  stream  of 
moral  and  spiritual  inspiration  that  has  made  glad  the  waste 
places  of  unnumbered  human  lives  and  made  the  desert  of 
drudgery,  difficulty  and  darkness  to  blossom  as  the  rose. 

In  your  home  and  in  mine  there  stands  no  altar  devoted  to 
the  keeping  of  the  sacred  fire,  yet  in  the  spirit  of  the  Parsee 
faith  it  behooves  us  to  keep  aflame  on  the  spiritual  altars  of  our 
hearts  the  sacred  fire  of  purity,  so  that  our  lives,  too,  may  be 
aglow  with  good  thoughts,  good  words,  good  deeds. 


-42- 


CONFUCIUS. 

Hy  kind  permission  of  the  Optn  Court  Pub.  Co. 


THE    GOSPEL     OF    CONFUCIANISM. 

POEM. 

MORAL  LESSONS  FROM   NATURAL  FACTS. 

(From  the  "Shi-King,"  part  of  the  canonical  scriptures  of  the  Confucian- 

ists.) 

All  true  words  fdy,  as  from  yon  reedy  marsh 
The  crane  rings  o'er  the  wild  its  screaming  harsh. 
Vainly  you  try  reason  in  chains  to  keep — 
Freely  it  moves  as  fish  sweep  through  the  deep. 
Hate  follows  love,  as  'neath  those  sandal  trees 
The  withered  leaves  the  eager  searcher  sees. 
The  hurtful  ne'er  without  some  good  was  born — 
The  stones  that  mar  the  hill  will  grind  the  corn. 

All  true  words  spread,  as  from  the  marsh's  eye 
The  crane's  sonorous  note  ascends  the  sky. 
Goodness  throughout  the  widest  sphere  abides, 
As  fish  round  isle  and  through  the  ocean  glides. 
And  lesser  good  near  greater  you  shall  see, 
As  LITOWS  the  paper  shrub  'neath  sandal  tree. 
And  good  emerges  from  what  man  condemns — 
Those  stones  that  mar  the  hill  will  polish  gems. 

SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS. 
(From  the  "Analects"  of  Confucius.) 

The  superior  man  is  exacting  of  himself;  the  common  man 
is  exacting  of  others. 

Not  to  retract  after  committing  an  error  may  itself  be 
called  error. 

In  serving  your  prince,  make  your  service  the  prime  con- 
cern and  let  salary  be  a  secondary  matter. 

In  sjx'akiim.  perspicuity  is  all  that  is  needed. 

Three  things  the  superior  man  greatly  reveres:  The  ordi- 
nances of  Heaven,  great  men,  the  words  of  sages. 

Possess  good  qualities  yourself  and  then  you  may  expect 
I  hem  from  others.  Before  you  can  blame  others,  you  must  be 
free  from  fault  yourself.  The  perfect  man  loves  all  men.  He 
is  not  governed  by  private  interest,  but  considers  the  public 
good.  Without  virtue,  both  riches  and  fame  are  like  passing 
clouds. 


Not  to  speak  when  we  should  is  cowardly  concealment. 

Some  one  asked,  "What  say  you  to  the  remark,  'requite  en- 
mity with  kindness'?"  The  Master  answered:  "How,  then, 
would  you  requite  kindness?  Requite  enmity  with  straightfor- 
wardness and  kindness  with  kindness." 

Tsz-Kung  put  to  him  the  question :  "Is  there  one  word  on 
which  the  whole  of  life  may  proceed?"  The  master  replied :  "Is 
not  reciprocity  such  a  word?  What  you  do  not  wish  done  to 
yourself,  do  not  unto  others. ' ' 

FROM    THE    "DOCTRINE   OF  THE   MEAN,"    BY   CONFUCiL'S. 

In  the  way  of  the  superior  man  there  are  four  things,  to 
not  one  of  which  I  have  as  yet  attained — To  serve  my  *f ather,  as 
I  would  require  my  son  to  serve  me :  to  this  I  have  not  attained ; 
to  serve  my  prince,  as  I  would  require  my  minister  to  serve  me : 
to  this  I  have  not  attained ;  to  serve  my  elder  brother,  as  I 
would  require  my  younger  brother  to  serve  me :  to  this  I  have 
not  attained ;  to  set  the  example  in  behaving  to  a  friend,  as  I 
would  require  him  to  behave  to  me  :  to  this  I  have  not  attained. 

Is  it  not  just  an  entire  sincerity  which  marks  the  superior 
man? 

Sincerity  is  the  way  of  Heaven.  The  attainment  of  sincer- 
ity should  be  the  way  of  man. 

THE  DISCOURSE. 

"Behave  toward  others  as  you  would  have  them  behave  toward  you."— 

Confucius. 

Thus  far  in  this  series  we  have  dealt  with  three  religions 
of  the  Aryan  branch  of  the  human  family,  the  Hindu,  Buddhist 
and  Zoroastrian  faiths.  We  come  now  to  a  religion  of  the 
Turanian  branch — the  Mongolian  race  of  China;  a  people  in 
whom  the  understanding  has  been  more  highly  developed  than 
the  imagination,  whose  sacred  literature  contains  poetry  in- 
deed, but  poetry  that  partakes  very  much  of  the  character  of 
prose ;  a  people  whose  interests  are  practical  and  scientific, 
rather  than  speculative  and  metaphysical ;  whose  concern  is  for 
order,  system,  decorum,  moderation,  rather  than  for  meditation, 
prayer  and  spiritual  songs;  a  backward-looking  race,  whose 
reverence  for  the  past  accounts,  fundamentally,  for  many  of  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  its  present  life. 

China  is  a  country  that  supports  nearly  one-third  of  the 

—44— 


human  lac-  on  an  an-a  eq&i  .  lo  tiun.  of  the  1'nited  States,  with 
twenty-five  hundred  miles  of  sea-coast  and  three  immense  river- 
valley>  an'-ireiratiii'r  six  thousand  miles:  a  country  that  has  wit- 
(I  the  rise  and  fall  of  successive  civilizations,  the  earliest 
of  which  is  so  ancient  as  to  make  modern  the  pyramids  and  the 
sphinx  of  Egypt;  a  country  whose  industry  is  world-renowned 
and  symbolized  most  impressively  by  the  gigantic  wall,  twelve 
hundred  miles  long,  twenty-five  feet  high,  and  surmounted  by 
a  parapet  on  which  six  horsemen  may  ride  abreast,  built  twenty 
eenturies  ago,  and  its  masonry  still  commanding  the  admiration 
of  the  world.  Of  the  nature  and  variety  of  that  industry,  let 
tin-  achievements  of  Peking  and  Nanking,  of  Canton  and  Hong- 
KOII.LT  tell.  Nay,  we  have  but  to  recall  the  fact  that  our  own 
English  words,  cotton,  nankeen,  silk,  satin,  are  of  Chinese  origin 
to  appreciate  the  significance  of  that  industry.  The  watchword 
of  China  has  ever  been  "education,"  and  whatever  limitations 
there  may  be  in  her  system  of  education  and  type  of  instruction, 
China  supports,  besides  a  host  of  smaller  institutions  of  learn- 
ing, the  University  at  Peking  whose  student-body  outnumbers 
that  of  our  two  largest  American  universities  combined. 

It  seemed  to  me  necessary  to  make  these  statements  part 
of  my  discourse  because  we  of  the  Western  world  are  altogether 
too  apt  to  think  of  the  Chinese  as  a  barbarous,  half-civilized 
people,  remarkable  for  the  peculiar  arrangement  of  their  hair, 
their  yellow  skin  and  slanting' eyes;  their  opium,  debauchery, 
and  dirt.  We  forget  that  China  has  her  centers  of  culture  and 
refinement  as  well  as  her  slums ;  that  she  is  no  more  to  be  judged 
by  the  denizens  of  these  districts  than  is  America  by  the  "Bow- 
«-ry  "  population  of  her  great  cities.  Let  it  be  remembered  that 
if  China  has  her  coolie  cooks,  canners  and  laundry-folk,  she 
has  also  her  magnificent  men  of  the  stamp  of  Li-Hung-Chang, 
and  Minister  Wu  (who  fairly  electrified  a  New  York  audience 
by  his  candid  and  unbiased  discussion  of  the  relative  merits 
<•!'  <  ont'iicianism  and  Christianity),  and  Prince  Pung  Kwang  Yu, 
who  read  a  most  scholarly  and  exhaustive  essay  on  "Confucian- 
ism" at  the  World's  Parliament  of  Religions.  But,  towering 
above  all  these  and  all  other  splendid  types  of  cultivated  man- 
hood, the  supreme  inspiration  of  the  eighty  million  souls  who 
today  profess  Confucianism,  is  Kung-Fu-tse,  i.  e.,  Rung  the  Mas- 
ter, or  Confucius,  as  we  have  learned  to  call  him  in  this  Latin- 


ized  form  of  his  name,  founder  of  the  state  religion  of  China. 
He  was  born  in  Southwestern  China,  in  the  principality  of  Lu, 
between  May  and  December,  551  B.  C.,  and  was  therefore  a 
contemporary  of  Gotama,  the  Buddha.  It  appears  that  already, 
as  a  mere  child,  Kung  showed  a  pronounced  proclivity  for 
serious  study,  and  at  fifteen  he  had  acquired  an  enviable  repu- 
tation for  his  intellectual  attainments.  At  nineteen  he  man-it -d 
and  a  son  and  daughter  were  born  to  him.  When  twenty  years 
of  age  he  was  made  "keeper  of  the  provincial  stores,"  and  a 
little  later  transferred  to  the  Agricultural  Department  as 
''superintendent  of  farms  and  lands."  How  profoundly  he  felt 
the  dignity  of  his  office  and  the  duty  of  faithfully  fulfilling  its 
requirements  is  evidenced  by  the  allusions  he  made  to  them 
in  the  "Analects,'  indicating  a  man  of  incorruptible  honor  and 
utter  consecration  to  high  ideals.  Holding  somewhat  radical 
views  on  questions  of  government  and  venturing  to  air  them, 
his  reward  was  dismissal  and  exile.  For  thirty  years  he  trav- 
eled from  kingdom  to  kingdom,  proclaiming  his  theories  of 
political  reform.  Everywhere  he  was  greeted  with  a  respectful 
hearing,  because  of  his  royal  ancestry  and  also  on  account  of 
his  evident  learning.  When  he  had  reached  the  age  of  fifty, 
a  crisis  occurred  in  the  affairs  of  his  native  province  and  he  was 
recalled  to  serve  as  "magistrate."  This  afforded  him  oppor- 
tunity to  convert  some  of  his  theories  into  practice,  and  we 
are  told  that  the  effect  was  most  remarkable.  Under  his 
administration,  children  and  elderly  people  were  properly  fed, 
the  poor  were  properly  cared  for,  the  dead  were  honored, 
crime  diminished,  capital  punishment  and  war  were  dis- 
couraged, and  even  the  "Magna  Charta"  was  antici- 
pated, in  that  he  maintained  the  right  of  a 
prisoner  to  trial  by  jury.  So  prosperous,  power- 
ful and  peaceful  was  the  principality  of  Lu  under  the  Confiu-ian 
regime  that  the  princes  of  the  neighboring  province  of  Ts'i 
became  jealous  and  forthwith  planned  to  undermine  the  safe's 
success.  Knowing  the  weakness  of  the  King  of  Lu  for  sp'-etae- 
ular  entertainments,  the  chief  officials  of  Ts'i  secured  the  ser- 
vices of  eighty  captivating  dancing  girls  to  present  tin-  Kiii<r. 
with  sixty  spans  of  elegantly  caparisoned  horses,  and  to  enter- 
tain him  with  dance  and  song.  So  charmed  was  the  Kinii  that 
he  at  once  gave  himself  up  to  amusement,  ignoring  his  duties  as 

—46— 


chief  executive  of  the  state  and  giving  no  audience  to  any 
minister  or  other  official  who  sought  him  for  business  inter- 
views. This  disgraceful  conduct  extended  over  three  days. 
Confucius,  utterly  disgusted,  withdrew  from  the  magistracy, 
resolving  to  devote  the  remainder  of  his  life  to  training  a  band 
of  disciples  in  the  principles  of  morality  and  good  government 
and  to  editing  the  sacred  books  of  his  fellow-countrymen.  All 
this  he  accomplished,  and  in  the  seventy-third  year  of  his  age 
he  died,  leaving  a  legacy  of  moral  precepts,  governmental 
principles  and  personal  example  that  has  enriched  and  ennobled 
countless  lives  within  and  without  the  confines  of  China.  Min- 
ister Wu  assures  us  that  the  influence  of  Confucius  is  on  the 
increase,  that  his  name  is  held  in  veneration  throughout  the 
Chinese  Empire  not  by  Confucians  alone,  but  also  by  the 
Taoists,  Buddhists,  and  devotees  of  other  religions  protected 
by  the  Chinese  government ;  that  his  word  is  recognized  as  law, 
by  the  emperor  no  less  than  by  the  poorest  peasant,  and  that 
his  spirit,  like  an  atmosphere,  pervades  the  thought  and  life 
of  the  four  hundred  million  inhabitants  of  China. 

Through  his  influence,  there  has  been  maintained  in  China 
that  reverence  for  parents,  family  affection,  and  love  of  order 
and  moderation  upon  which  every  traveler  remarks.  In  him 
the  national  trait  of  reverence  for  ancestors  was  so  pronounced 
that  it  made  intellectual  humility  the  most  conspicuous  of  his 
virtues.  To  him  originality  was  a  power  never  to  be  claimed 
by  anyone  under  any  circumstances.  "Yao"  and  "Shun," 
two  kings  of  remote  antiquity,  Confucius  regarded  as  the  real 
sources  of  whatever  of  truth  and  goodness  he  possessed,  and 
to  these  somewhat  mythical  paragons  of  perfection  he  would 
ever  revert  as  the  originators  of  that  which  he  did  but  humbly 
transmit  to  later  generations.  Thus  it  was  that  the  traditional- 
ism of  China  made  Confucius,  even  as  in  due  time  Confucius 
remade  China.  No  sooner  had  he  incorporated  in  himself 
the  race  to  which  he  belonged  than  it  felt  the  reaction  of  his 
mighty  personality,  eighty  million  souls  turning  to  him  as  he 
had  turned  to  Yao  and  Shun ;  his  biography,  however,  unlike 
theirs,  being  almost  wholly  free  from  mythical  and  legendary 
admixture.  Though  primarily  a  systematizer  and  teacher  of  per- 
sonal and  political  morality,  no  one  ever  believed  more  than  he 
in  the  power  of  example  as  the  most  efficacious  of  all  moral 

—47— 


agents.  Though  not  to  be  described  as  a  religious  teacher,  in 
the  conventional  sense,  Confucius  was  a  deeply  religious  man, 
profoundly  conscious  of  his  relation  to  "Heaven," — the  term 
most  frequently  used  by  him  to  express  his  sense  of  a  power 
higher  than  man  and  upon  whom  all  things  and  creatures  are 
dependent.  No  one  can  read  the  life  of  Confucius  without 
being  particularly  impressed  by  his  firm  belief  thai  he  wa» 
under  the  special  protection  of  Heaven.  From  the  many  inci- 
dents illustrating  his  sublime  confidence  in  the  protection  of 
Heaven,  let  me  cite  two.  When,  with  certain  of  his  disciples, 
in  the  city  of  Kuang,  he  was  for  five  days  imprisoned  and  it 
seemed  to  his  disciples  that  release  would  be  indefinitely  post- 
poned, their  signs  of  discouragement  and  despair  knew  no 
bounds.  Whereupon  the  Master  reminded  them  that  Heaven 
protects  the  culture  which  he  and  they  represent.  Wlial  harm, 
then,  can  possibly  come  to  those  protected  by  Heaven?  On 
another  occasion,  when  he  was  threatened  with  assassination, 
the  disciples  urged  him  to  hasten  his  flight.  But  Confucius 
replied:  "Heaven  has  endowed  me  with  virtues;  what,  have 
I  to  fear  from  oppressors?" 

To  determine  what  the  gospel  of  Confucianism  is,  we  must 
go  to  the  Confucian  Bible,  and  more  particularly  to  that  portion 
of  it  which  includes  the  teachings  of  Confucius  himself.  In 
its  entirety,  the  Confucian  Bible  consists  of  "the  five  classics" 
and  "the  four  books."  Only  the  former  take  rank  as  the  canoni- 
cal scriptures  of  the  Confucianists.  They  are:  (1)  "The  Spring 
and  Autumn  Annals,"  a  chronicle  written  entirely  by  Con- 
fucius; (2)  The  Shi-King,  a  collection  of  songs;  (3)  The  Shu- 
King,  an  historical  work;  (4)  The  Yi-King,  the  Book  of 
Changes,  or  transformations — magic;  (5)  The  Li-Ki-King,  the 
Book  of  Rites.  The  word  "King"  signifies  "web"  or  "string," 
and  these  four  Kings  were  compiled  and  edited  by  Confucius. 
The  four  books  contain  the  sayings  of  Confucius,  and  were  col- 
lected after  his  death  by  his  disciples.  These  books  are  known 
as  the  "Analects,"  or  table-talk  of  Confucius,  "The  (ireat 
Learning,"  "The  Doctrine  of  the  Mean,"  and  "Mencius,"  the 
stanchest  of  all  champions  of  Confucianism,  born  about  one 
hundred  years  after  Confucius'  death. 

Turning  to  those  books  which  contain  the  teachings  of 
Confucius  himself,  we  find  that  they  deal  for  the  most  part  with 

—48— 


politics  and  morals,  with  the  personal  morality  of  the  individual 
and  with  his  morality  as  a  member  of  the  body  politic.  Five 
relations  of  man  to  man  are  recognized,  sovereign  and  subject, 
husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child,  elder  and  junior  children, 
friend  and  friend.  To  each  of  these  five  relations  certain  duties 
are  attached,  the  fulfilling  of  which  makes  one  a  desirable  mem- 
ber of  society,  and  to  become  a  desirable  member  of  society 
is  the  chief  end  of  man.  Let  everyone  do  good  to  others  by  ful- 
filling the  duties  of  his  position.  Let  everyone  be  good  in  him- 
self by  practicing  the  five  cardinal  virtues — justice  generosity, 
truthfulness,  humility  and  propriety  (  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things).  Let  kings  be  benevolent  and  subjects  loyal,  husbands 
affectionate  and  wives  devoted,  parents  wise  and  children  obe- 
dient, brothers  and  sisters  mutually  attached,  friend  faithful  to 
friend.  Let  these  various  relations  of  life  be  governed  by  the 
s;in  10  order  and  serenity  that  we  see  in  the  solar  system,  in  the 
daily  drama  of  nature's  phenomena,  and  a  heaven  on  earth 
must  ensue. 

The  ideal  state,  according  to  this  gospel,  is  reached  when 
three  great  requirements  have  been  met:  (1)  Regulation  of 
the  individual  life,  or  cultivation  of  the  person,  calling  for 
study  and  rectification  of  the  heart ;  (2)  Regulation  of  the  fam- 
ily, which  becomes  possible  only  when  persons  have  been 
cultivated,  calling  for  filial  piety  and  fraternal  submission  of 
younger  folk;  (3)  Regulation  of  the  state,  possible  only  when 
families  have  been  regulated,  calling  for  integrity  of  character, 
economy  of  expenditure,  and  mutual  confidence  between  ruler 
and  ruled — all  of  which  requirements,  when  fulfilled,  result 
in  material  prosperity,  learning  and  virtue,  the  three  greatest 
blessings  the  state  can  have.  A  quotation  from  the  "Great 
Learning' '  will  serve  to  show  exactly  the  relation  of  these  three 
steps  in  "the  way  of  the  superior  man,"  and  their  mutual 
dependence : 

The  ancients  who  wished  to  illustrate  illustrious  virtue  through- 
out the  empire,  first  ordered  well  their  own  states.  Wishing  to  regu- 
late their  families,  they  first  cultivated  their  persons.  Wishing  to 
cultivate  their  persons,  they  first  rectified  their  hearts.  Wishing  to 
rectify  their  hearts,  they  first  sought  to  be  sincere  in  their  thoughts. 
Wishing  to  be  sincere  in  their  thoughts,  they  first  extended  to  the 
utmost  their  knowledge.  Such  extension  of  knowledge  lay  in  the 
investigation  of  things. 


Things  being  investigated,  knowledge  became  complete.  Their 
knowledge  being  complete,  their  thoughts  were  sincere.  Their 
thoughts  being  sincere,  their  hearts  were  then  rectified.  Their  hearts 
being  rectified,  their  persons  were  cultivated.  Their  persons  being 
cultivated,  their  families  were  regulated.  Their  families  being  regu- 
lated, their  states  were  rightly  governed.  Their  states  being  rightly 
governed,  the  whole  empire  was  made  tranquil  and  happy. — "The 
Great  Learning,"  I,  4-5. 

Such,  in  brief  outline,  is  the  gospel  of  Confucianism.  To  re- 
produce in  all  the  various  relations  of  human  life  the  beautiful 
calm  and  poise  of  Nature's  order,  this  is  the  Confucian  ideal 
of  life.  To  attain  this  ideal,  the  founder  proposed  a  systematic 
regulation  of  life  by  specific  rules,  these  to  be  multiplied  until 
they  covered  every  smallest  department  of  life. 

In  bold  and  striking  contrast  to  this  plan  stands  that  of  a 
noted  contemporary  of  Confucius,  Lao-Tze,  also  a  statesman 
and  moral  teacher,  the  founder  of  "Taoism."  He  shared  with 
Confucius  the  ideal  of  reproducing  Nature's  perfect  order  in 
individual  and  social  life,  but  he  held  that  this  should  be 
attempted,  not  by  establishing  innumerable  rules  and  adjusting 
souls  to  them,  but  by  developing  inner  purity  of  being  in  each 
individual.  Spirituality,  rather  than  political  economy,  ac- 
cording to  Lao-Tze,  must  be  the  basis  of  the  model  state.  Rules 
will  be  of  little  avail  if  the  heart  be  not  receptive  and  respon- 
sive. Let  each  individual  contemplate  "Nature's  inactive 
activity,"  as  illustrated  in  the  vegetable  kingdom,  for  example, 
where  we  see  vegetable  life  planting  without  seeking  the  fruit, 
never  marring  by  its  efforts  to  accomplish,  everything  being  left 
to  develop  according  to  its  own  nature ;  let  this  ideal  be  present 
from  moment  to  moment  in  each  human  consciousness  and  it  will 
prove  efficacious  as  a  deterrent  from  wrong-doing  and  an  in- 
centive to  true  thought,  speech  and  action.  The  method  of 
Confucius  was  purely  objective,  that  of  Lao-Tze  subjective. 
The  one  proposed  to  work  from  the  circumference  to  the  center, 
from  rules  to  the  soul ;  the  other  from  the  center  to  the  circum- 
ference, from  private,  individual  living  by  the  spirit  to  the 
harmoniously  regulated  life  of  the  political  and  social  organism. 
Both  Confucius  and  Lao-Tze  turned  to  Nature  as  typing  an 
ideal  for  human  life,  but  while  the  former  read  Nature's 
message  to  man  in  terms  of  order,  the  latter  read  it  in  -terms  of 
that  active  passivity  and  passive  activity  seen  most  perfectly  in 

—50— 


LAO-TZE -THE  OLD  PHILOSOPHER. 

After  the  Traditional  Conception. 
Hy  kind  permission  of  the  Open  Court  Pub.  Co. 


the  vegetable  realm,  and  bidding  man  be  molded  by  spiritual 
laws  known  within  and  that  prompt  now  action,  now  inaction, 
now  receptivity,  and  now  productivity; — an  interpretation  of 
Nature  and  of  man's  ethical  relation  to  the  Over-Soul  that  re- 
minds us  very  forcibly  of  Emerson. 

Thus  the  note  contributed  by  Confucianism  to  the  sym- 
phony of  Universal  Religion  is  reverence  for  Nature's  order. 
Man  has  no  higher  lesson  to  learn  than  that  taught  him  by 
Nature,  namely,  to  strive  for  the  creation  of  a  social  order  that 
shall  be  as  permanent,  as  calm,  as  unbroken  as  the  orderly 
movement  of  Nature's  forces  and  phenomena.  And  such  repro- 
duction of  Nature's  order  is  possible,  according  to  this  religion, 
only  on  a  basis  of  reciprocity — the  very  corner-stone  of  the 
entire  system  of  Confucian  teaching.  Nearly  five  hundred 
years  before  Jesus  of  Nazareth  enunciated  the  Golden  Rule, 
Confucius  of  Lu  had  given  it  both  negative  and  positive  expres- 
sion in  his  teaching. 

Confucianism,  then,  as  represented  in  its  scriptures,  is 
essentially  an  ethical  religion,  practical  and  prosaic,  paying 
little  attention  to  what  is  metaphysical  or  extra-mundane ;  con- 
cerned almost  wholly  with  life  here  and  now.  Of  what  lies 
beyond  this  sphere,  Confucius  declined  to  speak.  He  held  that 
all  speculation  concerning  it  was  profitless  and  futile.  In  all 
this  Confucius  reminds  us  of  the  Buddha,  who,  when  confronted 
with  questions  concerning  the  nature  of  Nirvana,  simply  re- 
fused to  have  anything  to  do  with  them,  remarking  that  these 
questions  are  of  no  practical  concern  and  pointing  his  inquirers 
back  to  the  "path"  that  leads  to  Nirvana.  So  Confucius  would 
ever  revert  to  the  conditions  and  needs  of  life  here  on  earth — 
the  rules,  obedience  to  which  produced  the  ideal  state — when 
interrogated  concerning  the  nature  of  death  and  the  hereafter. 

Here  are  three  sentences  from  his  teachings  which  admir- 
ably illustrate  his  attitude  to  eschatological  questions : 

"While  you  do  not  know  about  life,  how  can  you  know 
about  death  ?  While  not  able  to  serve  men,  how  can  you  serve 
their  spirits?"  "To  give  one's  self  earnestly  to  the  duties  due 
to  men,  and,  while  respecting  spiritual  beings,  to  keep  aloof 
from  them,  may  be  called  wisdom." 

On  the  question  of  God's  nature  and  existence,  Confucius 
preferred  not  to  speak,  not  because  he  was  an  unbeliever,  but 

—51— 


because  this  subject,  like  immortality,  lay  outside  his  immedi- 
ate province  as  an  ethical  teacher.  Plenty  of  passages  there  are 
in  the  sacred  books  of  Confucianism  to  show  that  the  founder 
believed  himself  related  to  a  higher  power,  but,  knowing  noth- 
ing of  that  power,  he  preferred  to  be  silent  on  the  subject. 
He  did  not  deny  God's  existence,  he  did  not  deny  the  reality 
of  a  future  life;  he  simply  felt  that  theism  and  immortality 
have  no  practical  or  necessary  bearing  on  the  moral  life  of  a 
practical  people.  In  all  this  Confucianism  is  closely  akin  to  the 
"Ethical  Culture  Movement"  of  our  own  time,  which  also  seeks 
to  set  aside  philosophical  and  theological  questions  in  the 
interests  of  the  moral  life.  But  I  venture  the  assertion  that  the 
suppressed  theism  which  marks  both  Confucianism  and  the 
Ethical  Movement  will  eventually  be  brought  to  the  surface 
and  found  to  be  the  indispensable  basis  for  a  truly  valid  moral 
code,  theism,  in  turn,  having  for  its  adamantine  foundation, 
science  or  exact  knowledge  of  whatever  is.  I  can  see  no  future 
for  any  religion  that  does  not  build  its  theism  on  science  and 
its  ethics  on  theism,  and  the  history  of  the  vicissitudes  of  both 
Confucianism  and  the  Ethical  Culture  Movement  give  consider- 
able support  to  this  conviction. 

But  one  religious  ceremony  did  Confucius  endorse  and 
advocate, — the  worship  of  ancestors.  And  every  Confucian, 
from  the  Emperor  down,  observes  the  injunction  of  the  Master. 
Besides  the  simple  ceremony  as  conducted  in  Confucian  homes, 
there  is  held  at  Peking,  once  annually,  in  the  red-walled  Temple 
of  Confucius,  a  ceremony  at  which  the  Emperor  burns  incense 
before  the  tablet  of  the  Master  and  utters  this  solemn  invoca- 
tion :  ' '  Great  art  Thou,  O  Perfect  Sage !  Thy  virtue  is  full, 
thy  doctrine  complete.  Among  mortal  men  there  has  not  been 
thine  equal.  All  kings  honor  thee.  Thy  statutes  and  laws  have 
come  gloriously  down.  Thou  art  our  pattern.  Reverently 
have  the  sacrificial  vessels  been  set  out.  Full  of  awe  we  sound 
our  drums  and  bells."  In  these  ceremonies,  whether  private 
or  public,  there  is  nothing  intercessory,  nothing  propitiative ; 
they  are  simply  commemorative. 

If  Buddhism  may  be  described  as  a  religion  of  the  heart 
and  Zoroastrianism  as  a  religion  of  the  hand,  Confucianism 
may  be  spoken  of  as  a  religion  of  the  head.  For,  precisely  as 
the  Buddha  declared  the  way  of  salvation  to  lie  in  a  self- 

—52— 


renouncing  love,  and  Zoroaster  in  purifying  work,  so  Confucius 
affirmed  that  it  lay  in  the  intellectual  mastery  of  a  systematic 
morality.  He  firmly  believed  that  if  people  would  but  rever- 
ently memorize  and  master  his  system  of  moral  rules,  it  would 
react  on  the  will  and  so  produce  the  moral  life.  People,  he  used 
to  say,  are  just  like  so  much  water,  which  takes  exactly  the 
shape  of  the  dish  into  which  it  is  poured.  If,  now,  one  could 
make  a  moral  dish  out  of  a  series  of  precepts,  and  then,  as  it 
were,  pour  the  people  into  it,  the  desired  moral  types  would 
be  the  result.  Confucius  believed  that  by  reverently  assuming 
certain  physical  postures,  the  very  soul  of  the  individual  would 
become  informed  with  the  graces  of  character  of  which  the 
postures  were  external  signs.  I  cannot  but  think  that  this 
faith  of  his  in  the  efficacy  of  rules  and  attitudes  to  achieve 
the  desired  reform,  this  method  of  working  from  the  circumfer- 
ence to  the  center,  which  has  left  its  impress  on  the  national 
system  of  education,  explains  in  large  measure  the  arrested 
development  of  China. 

But,  beside  his  reliance  on  rules,  Confucius  depended  also 
on  the  biographies  of  great  men  of  the  past,  persuaded  that  by 
contact  with  these  a  contagion  of  their  noble  deeds  would  ensue 
and  so  make  for  the  deepening  of  the  moral  life  of  the  reader. 
Still  more,  however,  did  Confucius  rely  on  the  power  of  exam- 
ple as  a  more  potent  moral  educational  agent  than  either  biog- 
raphy or  precepts.  He  found  an  incentive  to  set  a  worthy 
example  in  the  fact  that  imitation  is  so  natural  a  tendency  of 
human  nature.  And  it  should  be  noted  that  the  mighty  lifting 
power  of  his  example  was  due,  not  so  much  to  his  exalted  char- 
acter and  great  learning  as  to  his  striving  for  an  ideal  of  virtue 
and  of  scholarship  not  yet  attained.  Others  seeing  that  striving, 
were  moved  to  a  like  endeavor.  So  is  it  ever  with  a  truly  great 
teacher.  Not  his  intellectual  or  moral  attainments,  but  his 
spiritual  passion  to  possess  more  of  infinite  truth  and  right — 
this  it  is  that  determines  his  lifting  power  over  other  lives. 
Whosoever  is  a  true  servant  of  the  ideal,  even  though  failure 
be  his  portion,  makes  the  ideal  contagious  and  so  lifts  other  lives 
toward  the  same  height  he  himself  would  reach.  So  was  it 
with  Confucius,  who  taught  not  only  by  moral  precepts  and  by 
appeal  to  the  biography  of  illustrious  ancestors,  but  also  by  the 
mightier  power  of  a  magnificent  personal  example. 

53 


THE    GOSPEL    OF    JUDAISM. 


POEM. 

THE  IDEAL,  MAN. 
Psalm  XV,  translated  by  Wellhausen  for  the  "Polychrome  Bible." 

0  Yahweh,  in  thy  tent  who  dares  to  sojourn? 

On  Thy  holy  mountain  who  dares  to  dwell? 

He  who  lives  blamelessly  and  practices  righteousness, 

And  speaks  from  his  heart  what  is  true, 

Who  utters  no  slander  with  his  tongue, 

Does  no  wrong  to  another, 

And  his  neighbor  he  does  not  calumniate, 

Pompous  arrogance  he  despises, 

The  God-fearing  man  he  respects ; 

He  pledges  his  word  to  his  neighbor  and  keeps  it, 

He  who  does  this,  for  all  time  cannot  be  shaken. 


SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS  FROM  THE  "OLD  TESTAMENT." 

The  righteousness  of  the  perfect  shall  direct  his  way,  but 
the  wicked  shall  fall  by  his  own  wickedness.  The  righteousness 
of  the  iipright  shall  deliver  them,  but  they  that  deal  treacher- 
ously shall  be  taken  in  their  own  mischief.  He  that  is  stead- 
fast in  righteousness  shall  attain  unto  life,  but  he  that  pursueth 
evil  doeth  it  unto  his  own  death.  Righteousness  exalteth  a 
nation,  but  sin  is  a  reproach  to  any  people.  Better  is  a  little 
with  righteousness  than  great  revenues  with  injustice.  He  that 
followeth  after  righteousness  and  mercy  findeth  life,  righteous- 
ness and  honor.  Treasures  of  wickedness  profit  nothing,  but 
righteousness  delivereth  from  death.  The  path  of  the  righteous 
is  as  the  shining  light  which  shineth  more  and  more  unto  the 
perfect  day. — (Proverbs.) 

Wherewith  shall  I  come  before  Yahweh  and  bow  myself 
before  the  most  high  God  ?  Shall  I  come  before  him  with  burnt 
offerings  ?  Will  Yahweh  be  pleased  with  ten  thousand  rivers  of 
oil?  He  hath  showed  thee,  O  Man,  what  is  good.  For  what  doth 
Yahweh  require  of  thee  but  to  do  justly,  to  love  mercy  and  to 
walk  in  humility  before  thy  God — (Micah  vi,  6-8.) 

—54— 


MOSES. 

From  the  Sculpture  by  Michael  Angelo. 
By  kind  permission  of  the  Open  Court  Pub.  Co. 


PRAYER. 
From  the  Old  Testament.  Ps.  XVII. 

Hearken,  O  Yahweh,  to  innocence,  to  my  entreaties  give- 
heed,  attend  to  my  prayer  from  lips  free  from  guile.  From 
Thee  my  right  will  proceed.  Shouldst  Thou  prove  my  heart, 
shouldst  Thou  search  me  at  night,  though  like  ore  Thou  shouldst 
try  me,  Thou  wilt  find  nothing.  I  have  held  fast  to  the  law 
Thou  hast  uttered.  Aloof  have  I  kept  from  the  paths  of  the 
violent.  My  steps  have  followed  close  in  Thy  footprints,  my 
feet  have  not  faltered.  I  call  Thee,  O  God,  for  Thou  wilt  answer 
me.  Incline  Thine  ear,  listen  to  my  speech.  Of  Thy  favor 
show  noteworthy  tokens,  Thou  helper  of  those  seeking  refuge. 


THE   DISCOURSE. 

"In  the  way  of  righteousness  is  life,  and  in  the  pathway  thereof  there 
is  no  death." — Old  Testament:  Proverbs,  12:28. 


We  are  to  consider  next  in  this  series  of  discourses  the 
Gospel  of  Judaism — the  religion  of  a  people  whose  story  extends 
over  thirty  centuries  and  is,  without  exception,  the  most  re- 
markable in  the  history  of  nations.  A  people,  homeless,  suspect- 
ed, persecuted ;  wanderers  over  the  face  of  the  earth,  seeking  a 
home,  yet  finding  none ;  subjected  throughout  the  Christian  cen- 
turies, even  to  our  own  day,  to  gross  indignities  from  the  people 
of  Jesus  and  Paul,  both  of  whem  were  Hebrews ;  a  people  vic- 
timized by  Gentile  prejudice,  so  deep  and  so  inhuman  that 
even  little  children  of  refined  Jewish  parents  come  home  from 
school  crying  because  of  abuses  heaped  upon  them  by  the  chil- 
dren of  "Christian"  parents,  whose  finest  religious  inheritance 
is  from  Moses  and  his  successors;  a  people  whose  religious 
patriotism  has  been  intensified  by  persecution  to  such  a  degree 
that,  no  matter  how  liberal  his  convictions  may  be,  a  Jew  will 
remain  a  Jew  so  long  as  the  Christian  makes  it  a  reproach  to 
be  a  Jew ;  a  people  numbering  today  eleven  millions,  and  of  the 
American  million  or  more  it  must  be  said  that,  as  a  class,  they 
represent  the  most  self-respecting,  self-reliant,  self-supporting, 
self-sacrificing,  law-abiding  portion  of  our  mixed  population. 
Judaism,  Christianity,  Mohammedanism — the  three  relig- 
ions that  remain  to  be  considered — are  all  of  Semitic  origin. 
Just  whence  the  Semites  came  is  still  one  of  the  vexed  ques- 

—55— 


tions  of  ethnology,  but  in  historical  times  we  know  they  occu- 
pied the  Tigris-Euphrates  valley,  or  Mesopotamia,  and  here  it 
was  that  the  ancestors  of  the  Hebrews  lived.  They  were  one  of 
many  Semitic  tribes  that  migrated  to  the  Mediterranean  shores. 
After  a  relatively  brief  sojourn  in  Goshen,  on  the  Egyptian 
border,  they  marched,  under  Moses,  northward  to  Canaan, 
settling  down  to  agricultural  life  and  organizing  a  religion 
which,  like  Vedism,  early  Buddhism  and  the  most  ancient 
religions  of  Persia  and  China,  underwent  development,  its  evo- 
lution ranging  from  the  crude  polytheism  and  ethics  of  patri- 
archal times  to  the  pure  monotheism  and  highly  specialized  mor- 
ality of  the  post-exilian  prophets. 

As  we  turned  to  the  Vedas  to  know  what  the  gospel  of 
Hinduism  is,  to  the  "Pitakas"  for  that  of  Buddhism,  to  the 
"Avesta"  for  the  gospel  of  Zoroastrianism,  to  the  "Kings"  and 
"Analects"  for  the  Confucian  gospel,  so  we  turn  to  the  Bible  of 
Judaism  to  learn  what  its  gospel  is.  The  Bible  of  Judaism 
is  the  Old  Testament,  or  Covenant,  as  it  should  be 
called,  because  "testament"  is  a  mistranslation  of 
a  Greek  word  meaning  covenant  or  agreement,  and 
refers  to  the  agreement  said  to  have  been  made  be- 
tween the  Hebrews  and  their  God,  acording  to  which 
he  promised  to  show  them  his  favor;  even  as  the  "\e\v  Testa- 
ment" stands  for  the  pledge  of  God's  favor  through  Jesus  the 
Christ.  This  Hebrew  Bible  consists  of  thirty-nine  books  divided 
into  three  main  sections, — the  "Law,"  the  "Prophets"  and 
the  "Writings."  Modern  criticism  has  discovered  that  many 
of  these  books  are  of  composite  authorship  and  that  they  have 
not  been  arranged  in  chronological  order;  but  to  discuss  ihese 
and  other  results  of  the  "Higher  Criticism"  would  take  us  too 
far  afield.  Prior  to  the  year  450  B.  C.,  when  the  Pentat  M  li 
appeared,  many  books  had  been  written,  but  no  one  as  yet  had 
thoiight  of  making  a  collection  of  sacred  writings.  \a tin-ally. 
attention  was  turned  first  to  the  laws  which  it  was  believed 
Yahweh  had  ordained  for  his  people.  Interest  centered  next 
upon  the  story  of  the  beginnings  of  the  nation's  history  and  of 
the  creation  of  the  world.  Then  all  this  literary  material  was 
brought  together  and  passed  through  successive  editions  till 
it  finally  appeared  as  we  now  have  it  in  the  Pentateuch.  For  a 

—56— 


long  time  this  "Torah"  alone  constituted  the  Bible  of  Judaism. 
But  as  the  people  became  increasingly  interested  in  their  past 
history  they  grew  to  feel  that  the  books  of  the  historians  and 
prophets  were  also  part  of  God's  word  to  Israel  and  conse- 
quently a  second  collection  was  made  about  the  year  250  B.  C., 
kn«>wn  as  "the  former  and  the  latter  prophets."  For  a  long 
time  "the  law  and  the  prophets,"  constituted  the  Bible  of 
Judaism,  as  the  New  Testament  phrase,  "the  law  and  the 
prophets,"  plainly  indicates.  Later,  other  books, — Job,  Prov- 
erbs, .li.uah  and  most  of  the  Psalms  were  written,  and  all  these 
wrn-  collected  to  make  the  third  group  known  as  "the  writ- 
ings." It  so  happened  that  the  Palestinian  Jews  did  not  agree 
with  the  Egyptian  Jews  as  to  what  books  should  go  into  thih 
collection,  and  so  the  discarded  ones  were  called  the  "Apoc- 
rypha," meaning  doubtful.  These  were  never  received  by  the 
Palestinian  Jews  because  not  sufficiently  authenticated,  lack- 
ing the  authority  of  the  canonical  scriptures.  To  our  Roman 
Catholic  brethren  the  books  of  the  Apocrypha  are  canonical,  but 
not  so  to  most  of  the  Protestant  sects,  for  they  reject  them. 

The  Torah,  or  book  of  the  Law,  it  was  found,  needed  e^ 
planation.  Accordingly  an  explanatory  literature  was  started 
covering  the  century  before  and  after  the  beginning  of  our  era 
and  constituting  itself  a  book, — the  ' '  Talmud. ' '  It  may  be  de- 
scribed as  the  attempt  to  reduce  to  rule  the  spirituality  of  the 
Hebrew  legislators,  prophets  and  psalmists. 

Xow  the  significant  fact  concerning  this  great  body  of 
Jewish  sacred  literature  is  that  one  particular  message  or 
gospel  is  characteristic  of  every  section  of  it.  Hence  one  may 
properly  speak  of  "the  gospel  of  Judaism,"  and  it  may  be 
summed  up  in  the  word  Righteousness.  That  is  the  note  which 
Judaism  contributes  to  the  symphony  of  Universal  Religion. 
True,  the  word  Righteousness  gained  in  breadth  and  depth  of 
content  with  the  experience  and  reflection  of  the  people,  but 
throughout  all  stages  of  its  growth  the  word  invariably  stood 
for  a  standard  of  conduct  of  which  God  is  the  author.  Accept 
that  standard,  try  to  live  up  to  it,  fulfil  the  law  of  righteous- 
ness,— this  has  been  the  gospel  of  Judaism  in  all  ages.  Let 
us  review  briefly  the  religious  history  of  the  Jews  in  Old  Testa- 
ment times  to  see  how  this  statement  is  borne  out. 

Go  back  with  me  to  the  patriarchal  age,  in  which  Abraham 

—57— 


overshadows  all  other  personages.  Though  it  be  true  that 
Abraham  is  a  composite  figure,  representing  a  tribe  rather  than 
an  individual,  yet  the  personality  as  presented  to  us  in  the 
book  of  Genesis  makes  us  feel  that  he  is  typical  of  the  tribe  and 
so  may  be  treated  as  an  individual.  He  is  the  first  Jew,  bidden 
by  a  compelling  voice  in  his  own  heart,  to  leave  the  land  of 
his  fathers,  to  go  from  Ur  in  Chaldea  westward  and  lay  the 
foundations  of  a  new  nation.  Yahweh  (Jehovah)  is 
represented  as  making  a  covenant  with  Abraham  and  in  the 
very  heart  of  the  agreement  are  these  words:  "Be  thou  per- 
fect, be  a  source  of  blessing,  recognize  me  thy  God."  (Gen. 
12:2,  17:2).  How  admirable  a  summary  we  have  here  of  the 
triple  content  of  righteousness,  which  the  exilian  author  be- 
lieved obtained  in  the  patriarchal  era! 

Second  only  to  Abraham  in  historical  importance  is  Moses, 
the  most  commanding  figure  in  the  sacred  Scriptures  of  Juda- 
ism. He  is  the  father  of  Hebrew  liberty,  the  author  of  Hebrew 
legislation;  framer  of  the  original  code  out  of  which  the  ten 
commandments  as  we  know  them,  were  eventually  developed. 
A  masterpiece  of  Michael  Angelo,  now  in  the  church  of  S;m 
Pietro  in  Vincoli  at  Rome,  represents  the  great  legislator  at  the 
most  dramatic  moment  of  his  philanthropic  career.  It  is  the 
moment  when,  having  descended  from  Mount  Sinai  with  the 
revealed  tables  of  the  law  under  his  arm,  he  sees  the  Israelites 
dancing  about  an  Egyptian  idol.  His  eyes  flash  with  scorn, 
his  beard  trembles  with  emotion,  his  left  foot  is  thrown  wildly 
back,  in  the  next  second  he  will  have  risen  and  dashed  the 
sacred  tablets  in  pieces  on  the  ground.  Standing  before  this 
colossal  statue  one  hardly  knows  which  to  admire  more.  Hie 
sculptor's  genius  as  an  artist,  or  his  mastery  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment record.  Granted  that  Moses  derived  the  substance  of  his 
original  code  from  Hammurabi,  as  the  inscription  read  on  the 
black  marble  pillar  discovered  recently  at  Persepolis.  would 
suggest,  yet  positive  genius  is  apparent  in  the  adaptation  of 
this  Babylonian  code  to  the  needs  of  Hebrew  life.  And  in  pre- 
senting to  his  people  this  code  Moses  declares  it  to  have  been 
divinely  sanctioned  and  ordained,  an  absolute  imperative  of 
duty,  hedging  man  about  \vith  its  "thou  shalt"  and  "thou  shall 
not,"  a  transcendent  law  of  righteousness  for  the  conduct  of 
Hebrew  life.  To  Moses,  as  to  Abraham  before  him,  the  gospel 

—58— 


of  Judaism  is  righteousness  and  the  Sinaitie  code  is  its  em- 
bodiment. 

Even  the  maxim,  "An  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth."  which  belongs  to  the  ethics  of  this  period,  represents 
not  revenge,  but  righteousness,  justice,  as  then  understood. 

In  the  course  of  the  five  centuries  following  the  death  of 
Moses,  Israel  comes  into  closer  relations  with  her  neighbors, 
causing  her  existence  as  an  independent  nation  to  be  threat- 
ened again  and  again  and  her  future  to  become  increasingly 
involved  and  uncertain.  There  were  those  who  felt  that  Yah- 
w«-h  was  all-powerful,  so  that  if  he  suffered  the  surrounding 
nations  to  attack  Israel  it  could  only  be  because  of  Israel's  sin. 
These  were  the  prophets,  i.  e.,  forth-tellers  to  the  nation  of 
wluit  their  study  of  existing  political,  social,  moral  and  re- 
ligious conditions  had  led  them.  They  were  politicians,  in  the 
best  sense ;  statesmen,  making  predictions  on  the  basis  of  care- 
ful observations  and  mature  reflection.  They  take  the  ground 
that  Israel  is  assailed  by  foreign  powers  because  she  has  for- 
saken the  commandments  of  Yahweh.  To  these  men,  right- 
eousness consists  of  two  elements,  recognition  and  worship  of 
Yahweh  alone  and  obedience  to  his  rules  of  personal  and  social 
morality.  First  of  these  prophets  in  the  order  of  time  is  Amos, 
a  cattle-herder  and  owner,  moved  by  religious  patriotism  to 
]P;I\V  his  ranch  and  serve  as  a  reformer  of  the  conditions  he  has 
been  studying.  He  argues  that  national  injustice,  ingratitude 
and  idolatry  (worship  of  foreign  gods)  must  of  necessity  mean 
the  absorption  of  Israel  by  Assyria  and  other  calamities  be- 
sides, but  that  if  the  people  will  fulfil  the  divine  law  of  right- 
eousness, the  peace  and  prosperity  of  former  days  will  be  re- 
stored. 

Contemporary  with  Amos  is  Hosea,  a  man  of  finer  and  more 
delicate  mould.  He  does  not  argue,  he  pleads  passionately, 
tenderly,  with  the  people,  beseeching  them  to  remember  Ya- 
hweh's  love  for  Israel  and  forsake  their  evil  ways  because 
unrighteousness  Yahweh  will  not  tolerate.  The  fate  predicted 
by  Amos  and  Hosea  befell  Israel.  The  northern  kingdom  be- 
came a  colony  of  Assyria,  when  Samaria,  the  northern  capital, 
was  captured  by  Sargon  in  722  B.  C.  Soon  the  southern  king- 
dom of  Judah  was  attacked  by  Assyria  and  two  southern 
prophets  appear,  corresponding  in  large  measure  to  Amos  and 

—59— 


Hosea  in  the  north.  These  were  the  first  Isaiah  and  Micah. 
The  former  (called  the  first  Isaiah  to  distinguish  him  from 
the  exilian  Isaiah,  to  whom  the  last  twenty-six  chapters  of 
the  book  of  Isaiah  are  ascribed,  advises  Judah  to  trust  Yahweh, 
obey  him,  otherwise  he  will  not  take  care  of  his  people.  At 
the  same  time,  the  younger  contemporary  of  the  prophet,  Micah, 
makes  "holiness  of  life"  the  burden  of  his  message,  summing 
up  his  stirring  appeal  in  the  familiar  passage  from  the  sixth 
chapter  of  his  book.  "He  hath  showed  thee,  O  man,  what 
is  good,  for  what  doth  Yahweh  require  of  thee  but  to  do  justly, 
to  love  mercy  and  to  walk  in  humility  before  thy  God."  Re- 
form ensues  in  Hezekiah's  reign,  only  however  to  be  followed 
by  a  violent  reaction  under  his  successor,  Manasseh,  who  re- 
stores the  idols  and  idol-temples,  violating  the  law  of  righteous- 
ness in  the  extreme.  Then  the  book  of  "Deuteronomy"  ap- 
pears with  its  impassioned  plea  for  true  piety,  for  free,  willing 
obedience  to  the  Divine  Will.  King  Josiah  orders  the  book  to 
be  read  to  him  and  thereupon  proceeds  to  institute  a  drastic 
reform,  making  a  clean  sweep  of  the  various  forms  and  sym- 
bols of  idolatry,  extirpating  the  worship  of  foreign  gods  and 
achieving  the  positive  results  so  graphically  described  in  the 
twenty-third  chapter  of  the  second  book  of  Kings.  Meanwhile, 
however,  the  Assyrian  empire  loses  its  supremacy  and  in  the 
year  606  B.  C.  surrenders  to  Babylonia.  Judah  becomes  a  vassal 
of  Nebuchadrezzar,  King  of  Babylon,  who  besieged  the  city 
of  Jerusalem,  captured  it  and  took  off  the  majority  of  its  in- 
habitants to  his  capital,  where  they  remained  for  fifty  years 
(586  to  536  B.  C.).  All  this  had  been  predicted  by  that  great- 
est student  of  existing  conditions,  the  prophet  Jeremiah.  He 
could  see  plainly  that  the  Babylonian  captivity  was  inevitable 
and  his  reason  was  that  the  people  had  grown  to  care  more 
for  sacrifices  than  for  righteousness.  In  his  intense  religious 
patriotism  Jeremiah  stood  one  day  at  the  temple  gate  declar- 
ing to  the  people  that  their  temple  was  nothing,  that  their 
sacrifices  were  of  no  avail  until  they  mended  their  w;iys  ;md 
that  captivity  alone  could  teach  them  what  true  righteousness 
involves.  He  has  his  condemnation  too  for  those  kings  and 
courtiers  who  have  brought  calamity  upon  Israel. 

"Woe  unto  them  that  build  their  houses,  but  not   with 
—60— 


righteousness;"  that  live  in  palaces  while  they  hold  the  poor 
in  contempt ;  that  spread  the  foundation  of  their  wealth  on  the 
spoliation  of  the  weaker  members  of  society.  Religious  right- 
eousness as  a  social  potency  is  what  this  Jewish  prophet  pleads 
for:  ;iiMin»t  social  unrighteousness  does  he  protest. 

For  those  fifty  years  of  exile  in  Babylon  the  two  chief 
prophets  were  Ezekiel  and  the  second  Isaiah.  The  former  takes 
tin-  ground  that  the  captivity  was  ordained  by  Yahweh  pur- 
posely to  purify  the  people  and  to  teach  foreigners  his  power. 
Ezekiel  makes  a  special  claim  on  our  attention  in  that  he  de- 
fined the  required  righteousness  to  be  not  simply  formal  obed- 
ience to  rules  of  conduct,  but  a  spiritual  obedience  springing 
from  the  heart,  a  spontaneous  and  free  acting  in  harmony  with 
the  divine  will  as  revealed  to  Judah.  The  second  Isaiah,  with 
sublime  optimism,  affirms  that  captivity  is  Yahweh's  mode  of 
purifying  the  people  so  that  they  may  become  fitted  for  the 
greatness  and  glory  awaiting  them  in  the  near  future,  a  picture 
of  which  is  drawn  in  glowing  colors  in  the  fifty-third  chapter 
of  the  book  that  bears  his  name.  He,  too,  it  is,  who  speaks  of 
the  " suffering  servant  of  Yahweh,"  the  innocent  people  who 
suffered  exile  yet  had  done  no  wrong,  and  of  them  he  says, 
they  are  the  "saving  remnant"  of  the  nation  through  whom 
Isniel  will  be  redeemed.  From  the  context  of  his  address  it 
is  clear  that  the  second  Isaiah  -anticipated  the  Messianic  era 
in  the  very  near  future,  consequently  the  assumption  that  the 
historical  Jesus  is  referred  to  in  his  prophecy  is  unwarranted 
and  groundless.  Isaiah's  conception  of  the  coming  Kingdom  of 
God,  or  Commonwealth  of  Man,  was  developed  out  of  earlier 
prophetic  thought  of  Israel's  future,  and  is  perhaps  the  most 
dictinctive  peculiarity  of  Jewish  religious  thought.  It  repre- 
sents, moreover,  an  essential  element  of  the  contribution  made 
by  Judaism  to  Universal  Religion,  the  belief  in  a  coming  City 
of  Light  for  ;i  progressing  world,  a  state  in  wrhich  the  divine 
and  humsm  will  blend,  in  which  there  will  be  complete  con- 
formity to  the  Divine  Will  and  daily  life  be  inspired  by  the 
consciousness  of  the  Divine  Presence  as  entering  into  every 
part  of  life.  How  striking  is  the  contrast  between  the  forward 
outlook  of  the  exilian  prophets  to  a  glorious  future  and  the 
backward  look  of  their  contemporary  Confucius  whose  sources 

—61- 


•of  inspiration  were  derived  from  contemplation  of  a  glorious 
and  somewhat  mythical  past ! 

As  Assyria  had  succumbed  to  Babylonia,  so  Babylonia  gave 
way  to  Persia.  In  the  year  535  B.  C.  Cyrus,  the  Persian  king, 
permitted  the  exiles  to  return  to  Jerusalem,  and  some  forty 
thousand  availed  themselves  of  the  privilege.  The  chief 
prophets  of  the  return  were  Haggai  and  Zechariah.  They  ex- 
horted the  people  to  rebuild  their  temple  and  when,  in  515  B.  C., 
the  temple  had  been  rebuilt,  Haggai  remarked  that  its  glory  was 
greater  than  that  of  the  former  temple,  because  it  marked  the 
foundation  of  a  new  Jewish  church  in  which  the  desirable 
things  of  all  the  earth  would  fill  the  new  building  with  glory 
(II.  6-9.)  About  the  year  450  B.  C.  Ezra,  a  great  law  student, 
with  Nehemiah,  who  was  appointed  governor  of  Judea  by  the 
Persian  king,  came  to  Jerusalem  and  under  their  direction  a  new 
era  of  Jewish  life  was  begun,  the  gospel  of  righteousness  re- 
ceiving an  unprecedented  systematic  presentation  in  the  books 
which  constitute  the  Pentateuch.  For  one  hundred  years  the 
•Jews  enjoyed  peace  under  Persian  rule,  all  the  while  absorbing 
much  of  Zoroastrian  thought  which  left  its  mark  on  Jewish 
theology,  in  the  theory  of  demons  and  angels,  duly  transmitted 
to  Christianity.  Nay  more,  the  doctrine  of  "the  fall  of  man," 
can  be  traced  through  Jewish  channels  back  to  a  Zoroastrian 
source,  no  less  than  the  New  Testament  belief  in  Satan,  demons, 
angels  and  ministering  spirits  (fravashis). 

When,  in  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  before  our  era, 
Alexander  the  Great  conquered  the  Persians,  Palestine  became 
a.  colony  of  the  Greek  kingdom  of  Syria.  Soon  there  followed 
the  magnificent,  heroic,  successful  struggle  for  escape  from  the 
thrall  of  Greek  rule,  led  by  Judas  Maccabeus,  culminating  in 
the  acquisition  of  Jewish  independence  and  its  maintenance  for 
a  hundred  years  under  a  dynasty  of  priest-princes,  known  as 
the  Asmoneans,  until  the  year  64  B.  C.,  when  Pompey  captured 
Jerusalem  and  Judea  became  a  province  of  the  Roman  empire. 

My  purpose  in  this  rapid  review  of  Jewish  history  is  to 
point  a  most  important  fact,  namely,  that  the  continuous  sub- 
jection of  Judah  to  foreign  powers  exerted  a  salutary  influence 
upon  her  religious  convictions,  that  these  successive  subordina- 
tions, while  destroying  national  life  and  annihilating  all  hope 

—62— 


of  monarchical  re-establishment  yet  were  most  favorable  to- 
the  religious  growth  of  the  people.  The  Assyrian  and  Baby- 
lonian captivities,  the  terrible  hardships  endured  under  the 
dominion  of  the  Greek  Syrians,  the  Roman  siege  and  capture 
of  Jerusalem,  all  tended  to  quicken  Israel's  consciousness  of  her 
relation  to  her  God,  to  deepen  her  appreciation  of  his  truth 
which  she  believed  she  possessed  in  her  Bible,  to  intensify  her 
miuhty  hope  in  the  Messianic  era  soon  to  be  ushered  in  and 
to  add  new  virtues  to  those  already  identified  with  the  word 
righteousness.  We  have  only  to  read  the  literature  of  the  Greek 
and  Maccabean  periods  to  see  these  religious  and  moral  effects 
of  Israel's  political  and  social  tribulations.  Not  only  have  we 
the  book  of  Jonah,  teaching  that  righteousness  involves  show- 
ing mercy  to  the  heathen  and  that  the  divine  mercy  is  not 
bounded  by  national  lines;  the  book  of  Job,  demonstrating 
how  keen  was  the  desire,  on  the  part  of  some  at  least,  to  know 
the  ways  of  God  with  men ;  the  book  of  Proverbs,  a  compendium 
of  moral  wisdom,  with  its  ever-recurring  emphasis  on  righteous- 
ness as  equivalent  to  salvation ;  but  we  have  also,  belonging  to 
this  later  Jewish  literature,  most  of  the  Psalms,  the  hymn-book 
of  the  second  temple,  a  collection  compiled  about  the  year  150 
B.  C.  Of  what  do  they  sing  ?  Of  sentiments  that  indicate  a  deep- 
ened moral  and  spiritual  consciousness  resulting  from  the  dis- 
cipline of  adversity.  Under  Persian  rule  Israel 's  religion  had 
been  respected  and  many  privileges  had  been  granted 
the  people,  but  under  Greek  rule  their  religion 
had  been  derided,  their  property  confiscated,  thir  political  status 
annihilated,  their  person  oppressed.  How  natural,  then,  that 
they  should  turn  again  to  their  God,  and  to  their  own  souls  and 
feel  a  new  and  deeper  need  of  inward  purity,  of  a  clean  heart 
before  God.  We  see  this  in  the  fifty-first  Psalm  in  which  the 
jiuthor  cries  out  for  a  new  heart  and  for  a  recreating  of  the 
vi-ry  springs  of  his  moral  and  religious  life.  ''Wash  me  thor- 
oughly from  my  iniquity,  purify  me  with  hyssop  that  I  may  be 
cli-jui.  wash  me  that  I  may  be  whiter  than  snow.  In  me,  O  God, 
'•!•(  ;ite  a  clean  heart  and  a  spirit  that  is  steadfast  renew  in  my 
breast."  (Wellhausen's  translation,  "Polychrome"  Bible.) 

See,    again,   how  the   one-hundred-and-nineteenth   Psalm 
shows  forth  the  deepened  sense  of  reverence  felt  at  this  time 

—63— 


for  the  Divine  Will  as  manifested  in  the  commandments  and 
statutes  which  Yahweh  had  given  unto  Israel.  "Thy  bidding 
have  I  laid  up  in  my  heart.  On  Thy  behests  I  meditate.  I  for- 
get not  Thy  word.  In  the  way  of  Thy  decrees  I  delight.  In- 
cline my  heart  to  Thy  decrees  and  not  to  lucre.  Behold  I  long 
after  Thy  behests.  Through  Thy  righteousness  quicken  inc.'' 
In  the  twenty-fourth  Psalm  righteousness  is  made  a  condition 
of  membership  in  the  Jewish  church,  while  the  fifteenth  Psalm 
is  devoted  to  a  description  of  the  ideal  man,  the  man  worthy  to 
walk  in  God's  holy  hill.  Who  is  he?  "He  that  lives  blame- 
lessly and  practices  righteousness  and  speaks  from  his  heart 
what  is  true,  who  utters  no  slander  with  his  tongue,  does  no 
wrong  to  another,  who  pledges  his  word  to  his  neighbor  and 
keeps  it." 

When  we  follow  the  story  of  Israel's  vicissitudes  through 
the  period  of  Roman  rule  we  learn  again,  from  the  literature 
between  the  two  Testaments,  how  reverence  and  love  for  the 
Divine  Commandments  which  were  regarded  as  Israel's  price- 
less possession  deepened  still  more  and  how  righteousness  came 
to  include  not  only  the  manly  virtues  of  the  robust  morality 
inculcated  by  the  prophets,  but  also  the  gentler  virtues  of  pa- 
tience, forgiveness,  humility,  sympathy,  love,  inculcated  by 
and  exemplified  in  the  lives  of  distinguished  Jewish  teachers 
in  the  generation  just  before  the  birth  of  Jesus. 

In  our  study  of  Christianity  we  shall  revert  to  this  stage 
in  the  evolution  of  Jewish  ethics. 

And  now  that  we  have  seen  how  all  the  way  from  pa- 
triarchial  primitiveness  down  through  the  post-exilian  period  to 
the  reign  of  Herod  the  Great,  in  which  Hillel  and  Gamaliel 
flourished,  righteousness  has  been  the  priceless  pearl  of  .Jew- 
ish ethics,  the  central  doctrine  of  her  gospel,  this  discourse  can 
have  but  one  proper  conclusion,  namely,  that  as  long  as  man 
shall  live  on  this  planet  all  those  who  wish  to  make  progress 
in  righteousness  will  come  to  Israel  for  inspiration,  to -read  the 
gospel  of  her  prophets  and  her  poets,  her  sages  and  her  seers 
who  saw  in  righteousness  the  very  core  and  essence  of  religion. 


64 


CHRIST. 

From  a  drawing  by  Eduard  Biedertnann,  following  the  traditional  artistic  conception  and 
utilizing  especially  the  picture  of  Sodoma  at  Sienna. 

Hy  kind  pertniitxion  of  the  Open  Court  Pub.  Co. 


THE  GOSPEL  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 

PROSE-POEM— "LOVE."    I  Cor.  XIII,  vss.   1-8,   13. 
If  I  speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels, 

But  have  not  love, 

1  a  in  become  sounding  brass  or  a  clanging  cymbal, 
And  if  I  have  the  gift  of  prophecy, 
A 7id  know  all  mysteries  and  all  knowledge, 
A  ml  if  I  have  all  faith  so  as  to  remove  mountains, 
Hut  have  not  love, — I  am  nothing. 
And  if  I  bestow  all  my  goods  to  feed  the  poor, 
And  if  I  give  my  body  to  be  burned, 
Hut  have  not  love,  it  profiteth  me  nothing. 
Love  suffereth  long  and  is  kind: 
Lovo  onvioth  not,  love  vannteth  not  itself, 
Is  not  puffed  up,  doth  not  behave  itself  unseemly; 
Seeketh  not  its  own,  is  not  provoked; 
Takcth  no  account  of  evil, 
IiY.joieeth  not  in  unrighteousness,  but 
KV.joiceth  in  the  truth; 
Beareth  all  things,  believeth  all  things, 
Ilopeth  all  things,  endureth  all  things. 
Love  never  faileth     .     .     . 
But  now  abideth  faith,  hope,  love,  these  three ; 
And  the  greatest  of  these  is  love. 


SCRIPT!1  RE  SELECTIONS— FROM  THE  "NEW  TESTAMENT. 
MATT.  V.    43-48,  XXII.    35-40,   I.   John  II.   7-10,   15-17. 


PRAYER-SENTENCES 
From   the  prayers  attributed  to  Jesus. 

Our  Father  who  art  in  heaven.  Hallowed  be  thy  name. 
Thy  kingdom  come.  Thy  will  be  done. 

Holy  Father,  keep  through  thine  own  name  those  whom 
Thou  hast  given  me.  I  have  given  them  Thy  word.  I  pray  not 
that  Thou  shouldst  take  them  out  of  the  world,  but  that  thou 
shouldst  keep  them  from  the  evil.  Sanctify  them  through  thy 
word,  thy  word  is  truth.  Oh  righteous  Father.  I  have  glorified 

—65— 


Thee  on  the  earth,  I  have  finished  the  work  Thou  gavest  me 
to  do. 

Father,  the  hour  is  come.  If  it  be  possible,  let  this  cup  pass 
from  me,  nevertheless  not  my  will  but  Thine  be  done. 

THE   DISCOURSE. 

"On  these  two  commandments  hang  all  the  law  and  the  prophets." 

—Matt.  xxii:40. 

The  gospel  of  Judaism  has  been  summed  up  in  the  phrase : 
fulfil  the  law  of  righteousness.  That  law  consisted  of  a  mass  of 
rules, — civil,  ceremonial,  moral,  religious — intended  to  cover 
every  side  of  life.  These  rules,  originally  few  and  simple,  were 
gradually  expanded  into  the  elaborate  system  of  legislation 
which  constitutes  the  "Pentateuch,"  edited  about  the  year 
450  B.  C.  But  the  Pentateuch  in  due  time  became  the  l>;isis 
for  still  further  legislation,  witness  the  "Talmud,"  which  con- 
sists of  interpretation  and  development  of  what  is  prescribed  in 
the  "Torah"  and  which  came  to  be  regarded  as  having  a  like 
binding  authority  with  the  code  attributed  to  Moses.  The  effect 
of  this  elaborate  and  voluminous  system  of  legislation  on  Jewish 
thought  and  conduct  was  both  beneficial  and  injurious.  In 
so  far  as  it  furnished  an  external  standard  of  moral  action 
which  all  could  understand  and  obey,  and  involved  ;i  strict, 
wholesome  disciplining  influence,  the  system  was  decidedly  help- 
fuj.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  proved  to  be  injurious  in  that 
by  its  very  externalism  and  formal  character  it  drew  the  heart 
and  will  away  from  those  inward  sources  of  right  conduct 
which  are  the  highest  and  deepest  man  can  have.  By  splitting 
life  up  into  innumerable  details,  providing  a  law  for  each,  which 
it  was  sin  to  violate,  making  no  distinction  between  kinds  of 
sin  or  degrees  of  sin,  holding  that  he  who  offends  in  one  point 
of  the  law  offends  in  all — a  position  clearly  stated  in  the  epistle 
of  James  (II.  10) — Judaism  tended  to  despiritualize  life,  to  re- 
gard goodness  as  conformity  to  an  external  standard  of  right 
rather  than  as  an  attitude  of  heart  toward  what  is  good  and 
true,  to  make  righteousness  a  garment  that  might  be  put  on  or 
off,  rather  than  a  constant,  maintained  habit  of  the  soul.  These 
and  other  injurious  effects  of  Jewish  legislation  were  frankly 
recognized  and  appreciated  by  Hebrew  reformers  as  early  as  the 
seventh  century  before  our  era.  The  Deuteronomist,  for  ex- 

—66— 


ample,  writing  about  620  B.  C.,  published  his  passionate  appeal 
for  a  devotion  to  the  law  that  has  its  seat  in  the  heart,  the  law 
itself  being  found  there  (Deut.  xxx  II.  sq)  Ezekiel  and  Jeremiah 
roistered  their  intensely  earnest  plea  for  a  new  heart  that 
would,  out  of  reverence  and  love  for  Israel's  God,  practice  that 
righteousness  which  is  more  than  outward  obedience  to  a  set  of 
prescribed  rules.  So  again,  at  a  still  later  day,  the  authors  of 
I'sjilms  XV,  LI,  CIX,  and  XXIV,  belonging  to  the  Greek  and 
M.-x-rabean  periods,  expressed  the  deeply  felt  need  of  "renewal 
of  spirit"  and  the  creation  of  a  "clean  heart,"  indicating  that 
they  fully  appreciated  the  limitations  of  the  system  of  legisla- 
tion they  revered.  All  the  way  from  the  Deuteronomist  to 
Hillel.  who  was  an  old  man  when  Jesus  was  an  infant  and  the 
most  distinguished  legalist  and  scholar  of  his  time,  we  find  that 
there  were  those  who  recognized  and  gave  occasional  expres- 
sion to  this  morality  of  the  spirit  which  goes  back  of  rules  and 
regulations  to  the  motives  and  aims  of  conduct  and  which  is 
therefore  deeper  than  the  morality  of  conformity  and  compli- 
ance. But  no  one  had  sought  to  separate  this  spiritual  right- 
eousness from  the  system  of  legislation  and  lift  it  to  a  com- 
manding place  in  the  ordering  of  daily  life.  Let  no  one  think 
that  Judaism  was  deficient  in  spirituality.  The  literature  be- 
tween the  Testaments  bears  abundant  evidence  of  the  fact  that 
there  was  no  lack  of  this  grace  in  Judaism,  even  when  its  legal- 
ism  was  most  elaborate  and  detailed;  but  no  one  had  extricated 
the  morality  of  the  spirit,  taught  by  the  immediate  predecessors 
of  Jesus,  from  the  mass  of  rules  and  raised  it  to  the  rank  of 
supremacy  among  the  motives  of  right  action.  Had  Hillel 
done  this,  he  and  not  Jesus  would  have  been  the  founder  of 
Christianity.  Hillel  recognized  clearly  that  the  need  of  his 
time  was  just  this  extrication  and  enthroning,  but  he  was  too 
much  steeped  in  the  system  of  legislation  to  accomplish  the 
reformatory  task  of  isolating  spiritual  righteousness  and  mak- 
ing it  the  highest  and  main  controling  principle  of  action.  It 
remained  for  Jesus  to  achieve  this,  thereby  transcending  the 
Judaism  of  his  time  and  manifesting  true  originality.  I  admit 
with  the  eminent  scholar.  Rabbi  Hirsch,  that  Jesus  uttered  no 
new  moral  maxims,  that  one  can  match  every  sentence  of  the 
sermon  on  the  mount  in  contemporary  or  earlier  Jewish  liter- 

—67— 


ature.  Nor  does  this  reproduction  of  what  others  had  said 
before  him  detract  in  the  least  from  the  essential  greatness  of 
Jesus;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  mark  of  it.  Granted  that  in 
method,  and  in  thought  Jesus  is  a  Jewish  haggadist,  that  his 
ethics  is  as  little  absolute  as  that  of  any  other  teacher,  that  his 
similes  are  indigenous  to  the  Jewish  Midrash  and  of  common  oc- 
currence in  the  picture  language  of  the  rabbinical  homilies,  that 
he  was  neither  more  universalistic  nor  less  nationalistic  than 
the  synagogue  of  his  day,  that  in  none  of  these  respects  has 
Jesus  the  slightest  claim  to  originality,  yet  it  still  remains  true 
that  the  original  reformer  is  not  only  he  who  first  conceives  a 
fruitful  idea  but  also  he  who  plants  it  in  many  minds  and  fer- 
tilizes it  there  through  the  persuasive  power  of  his  quickening 
personality.  To  this  type  of  original  reformers  Jesus  belonged. 
He  preached  the  loftiest  moral  conceptions  the  race  had  won 
and  vitalized  them  by  his  commanding,  winning  presence.  Even 
as  the  transcendent  merit  of  the  tree  consists  in  its  drawing 
from  the  surrounding  air,  earth  and  water  the  materials  where- 
with to  build  the  strength  of  its  trunk  and  the  beauty  of  its 
foliage,  so  the  transcendent  merit  of  Jesus  lay  in  his  drawing 
from  earlier  or  contemporary  literature  the  materials  where- 
with to  make  his  gospel  a  source  of  strength  and  inspiration, 
stamping  what  he  borrowed  with  the  spiritual  genius  of  his 
own  wondrous  personality.  His  "judge  not  that  ye  be  not 
judged"  reminds  us  of  Hillel's,  "Judge  not  thy  neighbor  till 
thou  art  in  his  place."  Hillel  said,  "Whoso  would  make  his 
name  great  shall  lose  it,"  which  is  but  the  earlier  equivalent 
of  Jesus'  saying,  "Whosoever  exalts  himself  shall  be  humbled." 
Again,  Hillel's  remark,  "revile  not  when  reviled,"  had  its 
reproduction  in  "bless  them  that  curse  you."  Both  Hillel  and 
Jesus  enunciated  the  Golden  Rule  in  substantially  the  same 
words.  Consequently  it  is  not  here  that  we  find  the  originality 
of  Jesus,  but  it  appears  the  moment  we  consider  wherein  he 
surpassed  Hillel.  Perceiving  that  the  spirit  behind  an  act  is 
what  gives  it  moral  value,  Jesus  took  it  out  of  the  mass  of 
rules  where  Hillel  had  left  it  and  made  it  the  corner-stone  of 
his  teaching.  Higher  than  the  morality  of  obedience  to  that 
outward  standard  of  Jewish  Law  is  the  morality  of  the  spirit 
which  cannot  be  gauged  by  any  external  measure  at  all.  Higher 

—68— 


than  visible  conformity  to  rules  regarding  what  must  be  done 
and  still  more  regarding  what  must  not  be  done,  is  the  invisible 
motive  behind  that  conformity.  Such  was  the  contribution  of 
.1 1 'si is  to  Judaism.  His  recognition  of  this  truth,  his  isolation 
of  it  as  a  supreme  commanding  principle  of  action  and  his 
ever-recurring  emphasis  of  it  throughout  his  ministry  marked  a 
forward  step  beyond  the  limits  of  Judaism.  Thus  this  spiritual 
righteousness,  if  so  we  may  term  it,  this  special  gospel  of  Jesus, 
the  morality  of  the  spirit,  was  simply  a  reaction  from  the  ex- 
cessive externalism  of  the  legislative  system  of  his  time  and 
place,  a  system  that  crippled  spirituality  and  tended  to  make 
men  oblivious  to  the  inward  springs  of  all  true  morality. 

And  the  genius  of  Jesus  showed  itself  nowhere  so  much 
as  in  this,  that  he  related  his  gospel  to  the  Jewish  Law  and 
presented  it  as  a  development,  an  expansion  and  deepening 
thereof.  'Tis  a  sorry  mistake  to  suppose  that  Jesus  cut  him- 
self off  from  Judaism  and  sought  to  originate  a  new  religion. 
On  the  contrary,  ho  v:as  born  a  Jew  and  remained  a  Jew  all 
his  life  through.  As  such,  he  observed  all  the  ordinances  of 
the  Jewish  religion.  He  kept  the  feasts  and  fasts.  (Mark 
xiv.  12)  He  declared  that  the  rules  and  regulations  of  Jewish 
ceremonial  law  as  expounded  by  the  recognized  authorities 
should  be  scrupulously  obeyed  (Matt  xxiii.  2).  He  even  went 
so  far  as  to  say  that  not  one  jot  or  little  of  that  law  would  re- 
main unfulfilled  while  heaven  and  earth  remained.  (Matt.  v. 
18).  Lest  any  one  should  think  him  a  reckless,  ruthless  icono- 
clast, a  negative  revolutionist  in  religion,  he  said: '"Think  not 
I  am  come  to  destroy  the  law  or  the  prophets,  I  am  come  to 
carry  them  out."  And  he  might  have  added  to  develop,  ex- 
pand them,  to  bring  out  their  latent  deeper  meaning, — for  this 
was  precisely  what  he  did.  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been 
said  by  them  of  old,"  quoting  from  the  twentieth  chapter  of 
Exodus,  "thou  shalt  do  no  murder."  "But  I  say  unto  you 
that  whosoever  is  as  much  as  angry  with  his  brother  shall 
be  in  danger  of  the  judgment."  It  is  not  enough,  he  contends, 
to  obey  the  sixth  commandment,  not  enough  to  stop  at  the 
law  of  murder,  you  must  go  down  to  the  source  of  murder  in 
the  passion  of  anger  in  the  heart,  that  it  may  be  utterly  con- 
sumed and  thus  no  more  provoke  to  murderous  deeds.  As 
with  the  sixth  commandment  so  also  with  the  seventh.  It  is 

—69— 


not  enough  to  refrain  from  the  adultrous  act,  you  must  1*0  down 
to  the  source  of  it  in  the  evil  desire  of  the  heart  :  UK-IT  lies  tho 
root  of  the  sin  and  duty  regarding  it  calls  for  its  extirpation. 
Purify  the  inner  springs  of  conduct,  be  not  content  with  avoid- 
ance of  evil  deeds,  remember  that  the  act  itself  does  not  so 
much  constitute  evil,  as  the  prompting  of  the  heart  that  leads 
to  it;  not  the  killing  but  the  wrath,  not  the  adultery,  but  the 
lust.  Again:  "Ye  have  heard  that  it  hath  been  said  thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  and  hate  thine  enemy,  but  I  say  unto  you 
love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that  persecute  you,  pray  for 
them  that  despitefully  use  you."  Here  Jesus  quotes  no  spe- 
cific passage  from  the  Old  Testament  but  in  his  own  words  ex- 
presses what  the  actual  attitude  and  spirit  of  Jewish  ethics 
was  prior  to  his  day.  True,  the  Old  Testament  had  enjoined 
love  toward  one's  personal  enemy  but  nowhere  in  its  pages  do 
we  find  love  toward  national  enemies  inculcated.  On  the  con- 
trary we  observe  the  logic  of  the  worship  of  Yahweh 
as  Israel's  God  and  of  the  belief  that  Israel  is  his  chosen  people, 
led  directly  to  hatred  of  foreigners  as  an  inevitable  consequence 
of  this  unique  Jewish  privilege.  The  prophets,  notably  Jere- 
miah, the  Deuteronomist,  and  especially  the  author  of  the  one 
hundred  and  thirty-ninth  psalm  feel  hatred  of  foreigners  to 
be  not  only  inevitable  but  praiseworthy.  In  unqualified  op- 
position to  this  attitude  and  spirit  Jesus  pleads  for  a  cosmo- 
politan love  that  shall  extend  beyond  one's  personal  enemies 
to  the  hated  Romans  and  all  other  gentiles;  and  in  so  plead- 
ing he  made  a  distinct  advance  upon  the  position  taken 
throughout  the  Old  Testament.  Hillel,  it  is  true,  had  uttered 
the  same  sentiment  but  he  did  not  raise  it  above  the  level  of 
Jewish  legalism.  It  remained  for  Jesus  to  lift  it  out  of  the 
mass  of  rules  and  make  it  the  master-principle  of  the  moral 
life,  addressing  not  the  reason,  nor  even  the  emotions,  ;is  m.-niy 
think,  but  only  the  will.,  Jesus  rightly  divined  that  the  sub- 
tlest intellectual  hair-splitting  does  not,  of  necessity,  rouse  the 
will  nor  does  the  most  ardent  appeal  to  the  emotions,  for  the 
emotions,  while  easily  fanned  to  a  flame,  as  quickly  "cool 
their  ineffectual  fires."  Therefore  all  the  exhortations  of 
Jesus  are  addressed  directly  to  the  will,  each  man  being  re- 
garded as  responsible  for  his  conduct,  standing  face  to  face 

—70— 


with  God  and  dealing  with  Him  alone.  When  the  tricky  law- 
yer asked  him  (Matt,  xxii,  35)  which  of  all  the  command- 
ments in  the  law  is  the  greatest,  Jesus  answered  by  quoting 
two  verses;  one,  from  the  sixth  chapter  of  Deuteronomy  and 
the  other  from  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  Leviticus,  the  two 
together  inculcating  love  to  God  and  love  to  man,  add- 
ing "all  the  law  and  the  prophets  hang  on  these  two  com- 
mandments." In  other  words,  Jesus  would  say,  whosoever 
succeeds  in  obeying  these  two  commandments  has  in  him  the 
spirit  out  of  which  all  right  actions  will  spontaneously  flow. 

Thus  the  gospel  of  Christianity,  as  derived  from  Jesus, 
does  not  consist  in  righteousness  alone,  obedience  to  an  ex- 
ternal standard  of  conduct,  but  rather  in  what  we  may  call 
spiritual  righteousness,  or  the  morality  of  the  spirit,  which 
sees  in  love  for  God  and  for  all  men  as  children  of  the 
same  Father,  the  inward  source  of  all  right  action.  Of  this 
gospel  there  are  hints  and  suggestions  in  the  literature  be- 
tween the  Testaments  but  no  one  had  succeeded  in  giving  it 
special  and  continual  emphasis,  no  one  had  detached  it  from 
the  existing  Jewish  legal  system  and  made  of  it  a  new  moral 
issue.  This  is  what  Jesus  did  and  it  constitutes  his  gospel  and 
the  gospel  of  Christianity  through  him.  According  to  Jesus, 
each  human  soul  is  a  child  of  God,  endowed  with  power  to 
come  into  perfect  harmony  with  him  and  the  desire  for  that 
harmony  is  the  motive  for  doing  what  is  right.  The  reason 
why  men  should  do  what  is  right  is  that  they  "may  become 
sons  of  their  heavenly  Father,"  become  worthy  of  their  kin- 
ship with  God.  Hence  the  ideal  life,  according  to  Jesus,  is 
the  life  of  the  spirit,  the  life  of  union  with  the  Eternal  Life 
and  this  gives  to  morality  its  highest  possible  sanction.  The 
supreme  comiiiaiidment  of  Jesus  is  "be  ye  perfect  even 
;is  your  father  in  heaven  is  perfect."  In  that  utterance  Jesus 
gave  infinite  significance  to  every  humblest  human  being,  be- 
cause it  implies  that  there  are  infinite  possibilities  in  every 
child  of  God.  Imitate  the  Divine  example.  God's  love  is 
unbounded,  unrestrained,  impartial ;  it  is  symbolized  by  the 
sunshine  and  the  rain,  given  alike  to  the  just  and  to  the  un- 
jusl.  Reproduce  that  love  in  your  own  human  experience. 
Love  the  idolatrous  and  the  unlovely,  love  the  unrighteous; 


out  of  very  love  for  the  heathen,  for  the  hated  Romans,  the 
haughty  oppressors,  pray  for  them.  Such  was  the  meaning  of 
his  command  and  the  nearest  approach  to  it  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  the  sentence,  "Be  ye  holy,  for  I,  Yahweh,  your 
God,  am  holy"  (Leviticus  xix.  2).  But  when  Jesus  said,  "be 
ye  perfect  even  as  your  father  in  heaven  is  perfect,"  he  rounded 
out  the  earlier  injunction,  he  brought  out  what  was  implied 
in  it  and  uttered  the  very  highest  spiritual  command  known 
to  man.  But  what  is  more,  he  lived  it.  Be  doubtful  what  may 
concerning  the  authorship  of  sentences  and  chapters  in  the 
first  three  gospels,  which  constitute  our  chief  reliable  source 
of  information,  this  "synoptic"  account  of  Jesus'  life  leaves  one 
unmistakable  impression  upon  us,  namely,  that  he  practiced 
what  he  preached,  lived  his  gospel  of  love,  made  his  own  life 
his  greatest  teaching,  squared  his  conduct  with  his  ideals. 

The  highest  consciousness  a  man  can  have  is  that  of  his 
own  divine  origin,  the  realization  that  in  the  line  of  animal  evo- 
lution his  ancestry  reverts  to  God,  and  that  the  mark  thereof  is 
in  him.  Jesus  felt  this  sense  of  Divine  origin  and  relation- 
ship so  deeply  that  it  transfigured  every  humblest,  lowliest 
service  he  was  called  to  render,  lifting  it  to  a  sublime  height. 
When  he  washed  the  feet  of  his  disciples — perhaps  the  su- 
preme act  of  his  life — he  symbolized  therein  the  secret  of  suc- 
cessful service.  The  lower  strata  of  society  can  be  lifted  to 
higher  levels  only  by  those  who,  like  Jesus,  know  they  come 
from  God  and  in  that  consciousness  go  down  to  serve,  to  touch 
the  Divine  in  the  degraded.  Truly  do  such  souls  transfigure 
their  helpfulness  by  the  way  in  which  they  give  it,  i.  e..  with 
a  spiritual  grace  and  charm  of  which  they  are  quite  uncon- 
scious, even  as  they  wist  not  that  their  faces  shine  and  that  their 
pure  and  perfect  service  is  an  inspiration  to  those  less  suc- 
cessful than  they.  Given  that  consciousness  of  the  Divine,  that 
presence  within  the  heart  of  a  truly  God-like  love,  and  there 
can  be  no  human  soul  so  degraded  as  to  resist  its  influence. 
This,  I  take  it,  was  the  contention  of  Jesus  and  exemplified  in 
his  own  dealing  with  every  type  of  "sin-stained  souls."  To- 
day we  are  just  beginning  to  appreciate  the  significance  of  his 
teaching  and  example  in  the  work  of  reform.  The  redeeming 
power  of  a  deeply  spiritual  love, — :who  can  measure  it?  J?  we 

—72— 


are  fine  enough,  if  we  have  enough  of  the  heart-culture  that 
was  in  Jesus,  success  in  our  efforts  at  reform  is  as  certain 
as  it  was  with  him.  If  we  fail,  it  can  only  be  because  we  are 
not  yet  fine  enough,  because  the  divine  element  does  not  yet 
shine  out  clearly  enough  from  us,  because  our  love  still  lacks 
purity,  or  patience,  or  strength,  or  depth,  or  wisdom ;  it  is  not 
yet  sufficiently  God-like  and  therefore  success  is  not  yet  ours. 

The  gospel  of  Christianity,  then,  as  inherited  from  Jesus 
is  wholly  concerned  with  the  individual  soul  and  its  living  the 
life  of  God,  reproducing  in  its  own  measure  the  Divine  Love. 
This  was  the  all-absorbing  passion  of  Jesus.  The  problem  of 
improving  the  political  and  social  conditions  of  his  oppressed 
fellow-countrymen  in  no  wise  concerned  him,  for  he  believed 
that  by  a  miracle  from  on  high  the  long-expected  Kingdom  of 
God,  or  commonwealth  of  man,  would  come  on  the  earth  and 
in  less  than  twenty-five  years  (Mark  xiii.  30)  Jesus,  there- 
fore, was  not  a  socialist  as  is  sometimes  claimed.  He  came 
not  to  readjust  external  conditions  but  to  refine  men's  hearts 
and  to  quicken  in  each  soul  the  sense  of  its  divine  origin  and 
its  infinite  possibilities.  And  when  he  coupled  with  this  gos- 
pel the  Messianic  belief  in  the  speedy  advent  of  a  new  order 
of  society,  a  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  to  be  miraculously  es- 
tablished, in  which  only  justice  and  love  would  reign,  and  of 
which  the  poor,  the  oppressed,  the  despised  and  the  meek 
would  become  members,  he  brought  to  the  Roman  empire  the 
one  thing  it  needed,  a  message  that  literally  transfigured  life 
for  the  thousands  who  were  enslaved  and  who  were  greatly  in 
the  majority.  The  slave,  abject  in  his  lot,  the  property  of 
another,  could  now  feel  that  despite  his  chains,  he  was  a  per- 
son, that  God  loved  him,  that  Jesus  was  his  friend,  that  there 
was  consolation  in  his  words,  that  though  a  slave,  there  was 
something  within  him  which  could  not  be  bound ;  his  soul  was 
his  own,  he  might  be  scourged  but  the  lash  did  not  touch  his 
heart,  he  might  be  slain,  but  the  door  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
\v;is  open  to  him.  He  felt  superior  to  his  position,  he  lived 
in  an  ideal  world  and  felt  that  by  virtue  of  Jesus'  gospel  of 
love  and  of  the  "Kingdom,"  he  was  one  of  the  great  family  of 
God's  freemen.  So  woman,  whose  condition  was  degraded, 
felt  that  new  worth  was  given  to  womanhood  by  the  gospel 

—73— 


of  Jesus.  Her  body  might  be  abused,  but  her  soul  could  not 
be  outraged;  she  might  be  beaten  to  death,  but  she  could  join 
the  noble  company  of  the  pure  in  the  heavenly  kingdom.  Thus 
did  the  gospel  come  as  a  balm  and  benediction  to  the  Roman 
masses  and  when  later  on  it  made  its  way  to  central  and  south- 
ern Europe  where  neither  the  gospel  of  the  Epicurean, — advo- 
cating the  pleasures  of  the  hour, — nor  the  gospel  of  the  Stoic, 
—inculcating  quiet  endurance,  nor  the  example  of  Marcus 
Aurelius, — trying  to  hold  up  the  falling  empire  by  living  him- 
self a  noble,  worthy  life —  ;  when  none  of  these  proved  effi- 
cacious to  solve  the  problem  of  the  age,  the  gospel  of  Jesus, 
of  the  morality  of  the  spirit  and  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
captured  and  transfigured  the  world.  Judaism  as  represented 
by  Hillel  and  Gamaliel  was  unequal  to  the  task  required. 
Jesus  transcended  that  Judaism  and  laid  the  foundation  of  a 
new  religious  movement  by  lifting  the  spirituality  of  .Judaism 
out  of  its  legal  environment  to  the  plane  of  an  independent 
force,  making  it  the  dominating  principle  of  conduct.  Not 
only  did  he  emphasize  the  morality  of  the  spirit,  but  he  trans- 
ferred the  soul's  devotion  from  an  outward,  objective  standard 
of  law  to  an  inward  subjective  tribunal;  a  conscience  freed, 
enlightened  and  inspired  by  the  thought  of  a  Divine  Father 
whose  love  is  to  be  reproduced  in  human  life  and  whose  abso- 
lute perfection  is  to  be  made  the  infinite  goal  of  human  as- 
piration. 

It  remains  only  to  indicate  the  relation  of  the  Apostle 
Paul  to  Christianity,  inasmuch  as  it  was  he  who  instituted  the 
new  religion,  by  relinquishing  hold  on  circumcision  and  .Jew- 
ish ceremonial  in  general,  by  fixing  thought  and  sentiment 
upon  the  person  of  Jesus  as  the  Redeemer,  rather  than  on 
obedience  to  a  mass  of  precepts,  and  by  constructing  a  frame- 
work of  dogma  that  was  intended  to  define  and  explain  in  terms 
of  theology  the  spiritual  righteousness  taught  by  Jesus.  J'aul's 
position  was,  in  brief,  as  follows.  Man  cannot  fulfil  the  law 
of  righteousness  as  prescribed  by  Judaism  for  there  is  a  law 
in  his  nature  ever  warring  against  the  higher  law,  causing  him 
to  do  evil  when  he  would  do  good.  What,  then,  is  then-  to 
save  him  from  this  dreadful  plight?  While  pondering  the 
problem  there  came  to  Paul  the  belief  that  there  was  one  soul. 

—74— 


of  whom  he  had  heard,  but  whom  he  had  never  seen  in  the 
flesh, — Jesus  of  Nazareth, — who  did  succeed  in  fulfilling  the  law 
of  righteousness  and  who  out  of  compassion  and  perfect  love 
took  it  upon  himself  to  serve  as  the  Redeemer,  through  his 
own  perfectness,  of  sin-stained  man.  The  simple  story  of  Jesus' 
life  had  not  yet  been  recorded  in  any  of  the  gospels.  There 
was  as  yet  nothing  but  oral  tradition.  For  why  write  any  life 
of  Jesus  when  it  was  expected  that  any  day  or  moment  he 
would  return  on  the  clouds  to  earth  and  establish  the  Kingdom 
of  God  ?  To  Paul  then,  there  came  the  story  of  the  wonderful 
life  of  Jesus  and  he  at  once  exalts  it  and  makes  it  the  corner- 
stone of  his  system  of  faith.  Here  in  this  one  divine  human 
being,  who  enjoys  perfect  at-one-ment  with  God,  man  may 
find  the  means  whereby  he,  too,  can  fulfill  the  law  of  right- 
eousness. Jesus  the  Christ,  the  second  Adam,  thought  Paul,  is 
our  intercessor,  the  mediator  through  whom  imperfect  man 
may  be  freed  from  sin  and  made  one  with  God.  Such  was 
Paul's  solution  of  the  problem  how  to  fulfil  the  law  of  right- 
eousness and  upon  this  solution  the  new  religion  was  founded. 
When,  therefore,  the  question  is  asked  what  makes  one  a 
Christian  and  not  a  Buddhist,  or  a  Parsee,,  the  answer  is,  "be- 
lief in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ;"  i.  e.,  belief  in  the  exceptional 
character  of  Jesus,  as  one  who  differed  from  all  other  men  in 
kind  as  well  as  in  degree,  who  alone  of  all  men  was  able  through 
his  perfection,  to  fulfil  the  law  of  righteousness  and  thereby 
became  the  fitting  instrument  to  bring  humanity  into  at-one- 
ment  with  God.  This  belief  is  the  distinguishing  characteristic 
of  Christianity  as  one  of  the  great  religions.  This  belief  is 
what  it  has  in  common  with  no  other  religion  and  therefore 
determines  specifically  what  constitutes  one  a  Christian.  While 
therefore  the  gospel  of  Christianity  as  derived  from  Jesus 
makes  "love"  its  key-note,  the  contribution  of  Paul,  as  the 
founder  of  organized  Christianity,  causes  us  to  add  "creed" 
as  expressed  in  the  words,  "believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 


75 


THE    GOSPEL    OF    MOHAMMEDANISM. 

POEM. 

FROM  THE  QUR'AN;   SURA,   59. 
Translated  by  Sir  Edwin  Arnold. 

Sura  the  nine  and  fiftieth:     "Fear  ye  God, 

O  true  believers!  and  let  every  soul 

Heed  what  it  doth  today,  because  tomorrow 

The  same  thing  it  shall  find  gone  forward  there 

To  meet  and  make  and  judge  it.    Fear  ye  God, 

For  He  knows  whatsoever  deeds  ye  do. 

Be  not  as  those  who  have  forgotten  Him, 

For  they  are  the  evil-doers:  not  for  such, 

And  for  the  heritors  of  Paradise, 

Shall  it  be  equal ;  Paradise  is  kept 

For  those  thrice  blessed  who  have  ears  to  hear. 

Lo !  had  we  sent  * '  the  Book ' '  unto  Our  hills, 
Our  hills  had  bowed  their  crests  in  reverence, 
And  opened  to  the  heart  their  breasts  of  rock 
To  take  Heaven's  message.    Fear  ye  Him  who  knows 
Present,  and  Past,  and  Future :  fear  ye  Him 
Who  is  the  Only,  Holy,  Faithful  Lord, 
Glorious  and  good,  compelling  to  His  will 
All  things,  for  all  things  He  hath  made  and  rules. 


So  rule,  Al-Jabbar;  make  our  wills 

Bend,  though  more  stubborn  than  the  hills. 

SCRIPTURE  SELECTIONS. 
FROM  THE  "QUR'AN,"  CHAPP.  5  AND  83. 

O  ye  who  have  received  the  Scriptures,  now  is  our  Apostle 
come  unto  you  to  make  manifest  unto  you  many  things.  Now 
is  light  and  a  perspicuous  book  of  revelations  come  unto  you 
from  God.  Thereby  God  will  direct  him  who  shall  follow  His 
good  pleasure  into  the  paths  of  peace.  O  true  believers,  fear 
God,  earnestly  desire  a  near  conjunction  with  Him  and  fight 
for  His  religion  that  ye  may  be  happy.  Moreover,  they  who 
believe  not  shall  suffer  a  painful  punishment.  They  shall  desire 

—76— 


to  go  forth  from  the  fire  but  they  shall  not  go  forth  from  it, 
and  their  punishment  shall  be  permanent.  .  .  .  They  cer- 
tainly are  infidels  who  say,  God  is  Christ,  the  Son  of  Mary, 
since  Christ  said,"  Serve  God,  my  Lord  and  your  Lord."  They 
certainly  are  infidels  who  say.  "(Jud  is  the  third  of  three,  for 
there  is  no  God  besides  one  -God.  O  true  believers,  observe 
justice.  Let  not  hatred  toward  any  induce  you  to  wrong,  but 
act  justly  and  1'ear  God,  for  God  is  fully  acquainted  with  what 
ye  do.  When  ye  prepare  yourselves  to  pray,  wash  your  faces 
and  your  hands  unto  the  elbows,  and  your  feet  unto  the  ankles. 
Hut  if,  on  a  journey,  ye  find  no  water,  take  fine,  clean  sand  and 
rub  your  faces  and  your  hands  therewith.  Strive  to  excel  each 
other  in  good  works;  keep  your  contracts.  0  true  believers, 
surely  wine  and  lots  and  images  are  an  abominition  of  the  work 
of  Satan,  therefore  avoid  them  that  ye  may  prosper.  Obey 
God  and  obey  the  Apostle  and  take  heed  by  ourselves,  for  God 
loveth  those  who  do  good.  0  true  believers,  take  care  of  your 
souls.  Woe  be  unto  those  who  give  short  measure  or  weight; 
who.  when  they  receive  by  measure  from  other  men,  take  the 
full,  but  when  they  measure  unto  them,  or  weigh  unto  them, 
defraud.  Let  not  these  think  they  shall  be  raised  again  on  the 
Great  Day.  Hy  no  means.  Verily  the  register  of  the  actions  of 
the  wicked  is  surely  in  Sejjin— a  book  distinctly  written.  But 
the  register  of  the  actions  of  the  righteous  is  in  Illiyyun,  a  book 
distinctly  written.  Verily,  the  righteous  shall  dwell  among 
delights,  thou  shalt  see  in  their  faces  the  brightness  of  joy. 

PRAYER. 
THE  "LORD'S  PRAYER"  OF  MOHAMMEDANISM — QUR'AN,  CHAP.  I. 

Praise  be  to  God,  the  Lord  of  all  creatures,  the  most  merci- 
ful, the  King  of  the  day  of  judgment.  Thee  do  we  worship  and 
of  Thee  do  we  beg  assistance.  Direct  us  in  the  right  way,  in 
the  way  of  those  to  whom  Thou  hast  been  gracious;  not  of 
those  against  whom  Thou  art  incensed,  nor  those  who  go 
astray. 

THE   DISCOURSE. 

"Lo  Illah  11  Allah,  Mohammed  rasool  Allah!.*' 
(There  is  no  God  but  Allah,  Mohammed  is  the  prophet  of  Allah.) 

We  come  now  to  the  latest  of  the  seven  great  religions,  the 
least  appreciated  and  the  most  misunderstood,  albeit  that  Mo- 

—77— 


hammedanism,  both  in  origin  and  in  type,  is  nearer  Judaism 
and  Christianity  than  any  other  of  the  great  systems  of  faith. 
It  originated  thirteen  centuries  ago  in  the  Arabian  peninsula, 
where  the  streams  of  culture  and  of  commerce  met  in  the  middle 
ages,  where  the  markets  of  exchange  were  stationed  for  India's 
treasures  and  the  products  of  the  Mediterranean  coasts.  This 
religion  is  today  acknowledged  by  two  hundred  million  souls 
and  covers  an  area  equal  to  one-third  of  the  globe.  The  Niger 
and  the  Nile,  the  Jordan  and  the  Ganges,  the  Maritza  and  the 
Yang-tse-Kiang,  fertilize  Mohammedan  soil.  Twice  did  this 
religion  threaten  to  overrun  all  Europe;  in  732,  when  it  was 
checked  at  Tours  by  Charles  Martel,  and  again  in  1683,  when 
John,  King  of  Poland,  at  the  head  of  twenty  thousand  soldiers 
defeated  the  Mohammedan  army  at  Vienna.  To  the  early  repre- 
sentatives of  this  religion  the  world  is  indebted  for  the  immense 
services  they  rendered  in  the  advancement  of  civilization.  For 
it  was  they  who  transmitted  the  treasures  of  Greek  literature 
and  philosophy  from  the  middle  ages  to  the  renaissance,  they 
who  originated  the  graceful  art-forms  of  which  the  Taj-Mahal 
-and  the  Alhambra  are  the  most  famous  specimens;  they  who 
contributed  to  the  sciences  of  algebra  and  astronomy,  chemistry 
and  medicine ;  they  who  dotted  the  Saracen  empire  with  univer- 
sities and  they  who  established  at  Bagdad  and  at  Cairo  two  of 
the  most  renowned  libraries  of  the  world. 

The  founder  of  Mohammedanism  has  been  called  "the 
lying  prophet."  His  name  has  been  used  as  a  synonym 
for  Satan  and  his  followers  have  been  described  as  "part  of 
the  infernal  host."  Luther  addressed  him  with  the  words: 
"Oh  fie,  you  horrid  devil,  you  damned  Mohammed;"  and 
Melancthon  affirmed  he  was  "inspired  by  Satan."  For  seven 
centuries  not  a  sound  in  defence  or  behalf  of  Mohammed  was 
heard.  The  first  word  of  truth  and  justice  was  spoken  in  the 
fourteenth  century  by  Sir  John  Mandeville,  an  English  traveler, 
and  his  tribute  was  a  veritable  bugle-note  in  the  night  of 
bigotry  and  malice.  Four  centuries  later  Lessing,  in  his  "Na- 
than der  Weise,"  registered  his  profound  respect  for  the  es- 
sential worth  of  Mohammedanism.  And  then  came  Carlyle, 
fairly  stunning  the  British  public  by  placing  Mohammed  among 
the  heroes  of  history.  Yet,  in  our  own  generation,  Christian 

—78— 


criticism,  born  of  ignorance  and  prejudice,  perpetuates  opinions: 
of  Mohammed  that  have  no  root  in  truth  and  slanders  that  are 
without  any  real  warrant  whatsoever  still  resound  from  pul- 
pit, platform  and  press. 

Mohammed  was  born  in  571  at  Mecca,  one  of  the  chief  cen- 
ters of  Arabian  commerce  and  culture,  visited  annually  by 
some  two  hundred  thousand  Muslims  in  accordance  with  the 
religious  law  requiring  a  pilgrimage,  at  least  once  during  life, 
to  the  prophet's  birthplace.  His  father  died  before  the  child 
was  born  and  his  mother  before  he  had  reached  his  teens.  How 
deeply  he  felt  the  deprivations  of  orphanage  is  attested  by  many 
passages  in  the  Qur'an,  enjoining  upon  the  faithful  the  duty 
of  tender  regard  for  the  person  of  orphans  and  scrupulous  care 
not  to  touch  their  property.  Bereft  of  both  father  and  mother 
the  lad  was  adopted,  first  by  his  grandfather  and  later  by  his 
uncle,  a  rich,  generous  and  magnanimous  man,  who  disapproved 
of  his  nephew's  doctrines,  yet  on  grounds  of  kinship  and  per- 
sonal regard  gave  him  freely  of  the  abundance  of  his  posses- 
sions. Financial  reverses  came  to  this  noble  guardian  and  the 
boy  was  obliged  to  earn  his  own  living.  For  several  years  he 
tended  sheep  till,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  he  entered  the 
service  of  a  rich  widow,  Kadijah,  as  camel-driver  and  conductor 
of  caravans  journeying  between  Jerusalem  and  Damascus.  She 
became  infatuated  with  him,  married  him  and  though  fifteen 
years  his  senior,  their  married  life  appears  to  have  been  both 
happy  and  mutually  inspiring.  Kadijah,  indeed,  seems  to  have 
been  the  very  antithesis  of  Lucrezia,  the  wife  of  Andrea  del 
Sarto,  the  faultless  painter  who  felt  he  might  have  been  also 
the  soulful  painter,  rivalling  Raphael  and  Angelo,  had  she  only 
given  him  sympathy,  interest  and  inspiration,  all  of  which 
Kadijah  gave  Mohammed.  She  nursed  him  in  his  days  of 
illness,  strengthened  him  in  hours  of  weakness,  encouraged  him 
and  kept  him  up  to  the  level  of  the  best  of  which  he  was 
capable  as  long  as  she  lived. 

No  authentic  portrait  of  the  prophet  has  come  down  to  us. 
But  from  various  accounts  we  learn  that  Mohammed  was  a 
man  of  medium  height,  with  a  massive,  well-developed  head, 
his  dark  curly  hair  streaming  down  to  his  broad  shoulders  and 
his  Mack,  restless  eyos  looking  out  beneath  heavy  eye-lashes. 

—79— 


and  eyebrows.  His  nose  was  somewhat  aquiline  and  his  teeth 
were  regular  and  white  as  hail-stones.  From  his  fair  and  up- 
right dealing  he  derived  the  name,  "Al-Amin,"  or  "the  faith- 
ful." His  was  the  simple  life,  lived  in  humblest  style,  even  unto 
austerity;  for  he  would  often  go  for  months  together  without 
eating  a  hearty  meal  while  daily  he  ate  the  plainest  food,  light- 
ing his  own  fires,  mending  his  own  clothes  and  shoes,  having 
given  his  slaves  their  freedom.  The  following  beautiful  slory 
illustrates  impressively  a  virtue  he  often  manifested  as  well  as 
taught.  Sleeping  one  day  under  a  palm  tree,  he  awoke  sud- 
denly to  find  an  enemy  named  Du'thur  standing  over  him  with 
drawn  sword.  "0,  Muhammad,  who  is  there  now  to  save 
thee  ? ' '  cried  the  man.  ' '  God, ' '  answered  Muhammad.  Du  'thur 
dropped  his  sword.  Muhammad  seized  it,  and  cried  in  turn : 
"O,  Du'thur,  who  is  there  now  to  save  thee?"  "No  one,"  re- 
plied Du'thur.  "Then  learn  from  me  to  be  merciful,"  said 
Muhammad,  and  handed  him  back  the  weapon.  Du'thur  be- 
came one  of  his  firmest  friends.  Mohammed's  marriage  to  a 
rich  widow  afforded  him  opportunity  to  gratify  his  taste  for 
reflection  and  meditation.  Not  far  from  his  house,  on  a  bluff 
overlooking  the  blazing  sands  of  the  desert,  was  a  cave,  and 
thither  he  frequently  repaired  to  study,  not  books,  for  he  could 
not  read;  but  Nature  and  the  tablets  of  his  own  heart.  At't'lirted 
with  a  nervous  disorder  that  occasionally  caused  him  loss  of 
consciousness,  it  was  in  one  of  these  attacks  that  he  became 
apprised  of  his  mission.  We  are  told  he  fell  into  convulsions, 
streams  of  perspiration  flowed  down  his  cheeks,  his  eyes  burned 
like  glowing  coals  and  he  was  about  to  leap  from  the  brink  <»f 
a  precipice  to  end  his  misery  by  suicide  when,  the  legend  says. 
he  saw  the  figure  and  heard  the  voice  of  the  angel  Gabriel, 
telling  him,  "Thou  art  the  apostle  of  the  Lord."  Rushing  to 
his  wife  he  exclaimed,  "am  I  in  truth  a  prophet  or  am  I  mad?'' 
She  answered,  "no  harmful  thing  has  happened  thee;  rejoin-. 
thou  speakest  the  truth.  Thou  dost  not  return  evil  for  evil, 
thou  art  kind  to  relatives  and  friends,  thou  dost  not  gossip, 
thou  wilt  yet  surely  be  the  prophet  of  prophets."  Note  in  this 
reply  the  fine  conviction  of  Kadijah  that  the  surest  test  of  fitness 
for  a  prophetic  career  is  nobility  and  purity  of  life.  Moliauiiiii-d 
hesitated  at  first,  even  as  did  Jesus  at  the  outset  of  his  prophetic 

—80— 


career,  but  at  last  the  belief  is  fixed  that  he  has  been  called  to 
be  the  bearer  of  a  message.  But  the  Meccans  received  him  not. 
They  called  him  fool,  madman,  liar;  so  that  he  shared  the  fate 
of  others  of  his  vocation,  illustrating  the  proverb  that  a  prophet 
is  not  honored  in  his  own  country.  But  opposition  only  in- 
tensified his  consecration.  When  his  uncle  besought  him  to 
cease  his  attempt  to  convert  the  Meccans,  bidding  him  name 
the  price  of  silence,  he  replied:  "Though  they  gave  me  the 
sun  in  my  right  hand  and  the  moon  in  my  left  to  bring  me  back 
from  my  undertaking,  yet  will  I  not  pause  till  the  Lord  carry 
His  cause  to  victory,  or  till  I  die  for  it. ' '  Abu  Talib  replied : 
"Go  in  peace,  son  of  my  brother,  and  say  what  thou  wilt,  for 
by  God  I  will  on  no  condition  abandon  thee."  Eventually  as- 
sassination was  planned  and  the  prophet  hearing  of  it  resolved 
on  flight,  making  his  way  on  a  night  in  July,  622,  to  the  city 
due  north  of  Mecca,  now  known  as  Medina.  This  year  of  the 
flight,  or  "Hejira,"  marks  the  beginning  of  the  Mohammedan 
era.  Hitherto  Mohammed  had  been  a  preacher  proclaiming 
unwelcome  truth,  denouncing  vices  of  his  countrymen  and  re- 
buking low  standards  of  business  dealing.  Now  he  assumes  the 
role  of  legislator,  ruler,  conqueror,  heading  a  defensive  and 
aggressive  movement  which  meets  with  increasing  success,  the 
number  of  followers  passing  the  five  hundred  mark  within  two 
years.  For  eight  more  years  the  prophet  continues  his  con- 
quering crusade,  aiming  to  win  over  all  Arabia  to  his  message 
and  claims,  till,  on  the  eighth  of  June,  632,  he  died,  leaving  to 
his  beloved  disciple,  Abu-Bekr,  and  to  succeeding  califs  that 
task  of  missionary  expansion  which  gradually  resulted  in  es- 
tablishing the  founder's  faith  over  an  empire  greater  than  that 
of  Rome  and  almost  making  it  the  one  religion  of  the  civilized 
world.  Before  we  pass  from  the  founder's  life  to  his  message, 
let  it  be  said  that  he  was  certainly  not  an  impostor,  though 
both  orthodox  Christians  and  crude  rationalists  unite  in  the 
assertion.  Voltaire  voiced  the  view  of  the  latter  class  in  a 
verse  that  won  the  approval  of  both : 

"Chaque  peuple  a  son  tour  a  brill^  sur  la  terre, 
Par  les  lois,  par  les  arts  et  surtout  par  les  guerres. 
Le  temps  de  1'Arabie  est  enfin  venu, 
II  faut  un  nouveau  culte,  il  faut  de  nouveaux  fers 
II  faut  un  nouveau  Dieu  pour  1'aveugle  univers." 

—81— 


Credulous  humanity  had  been  victimized  by  the  crafty 
prophet  of  Arabia,  who  palmed  off  a  new  God,  a  new  cult  and 
new  fetters  on  an  unsuspecting  public !  "Amen,"  cried  the  crude 
rationalists,  because  to  them  all  religion  is  deception,  an  in- 
vention of  politic  priests  and  scheming  prophets.  But  among 
the  notions  to  be  relegated  to  the  realm  of  prejudice  and  super- 
stition are  these:  Religion  is  an  invention,  all  prophets  are 
impostors  and  Mohammed  perpetrated  the  most  egregious  fraud 
on  record.  The  proofs  that  Mohammed  was  no  crafty  cheat, 
no  scheming  impostor  are  not  far  to  seek  and  they  are  numer- 
ous. Let  me  cite  two.  At  Mecca  Mohammed  had  received  a 
handsome  income  as  custodian  of  the  Kaaba,  or  sacred  stone 
worshipped  by  the  residents  and  by  the  visiting  pilgrims.  The 
religious  practices  connected  with  this  worship  came  to  be  re- 
garded by  Mohammed  as  sheer  superstition.  To  criticize  them 
meant  certain  loss  of  his  position.  Yet  he  did  not  hesitate  to 
denounce  them  and  promptly  surrendered  his  profitable  cus- 
todianship. Is  such  conduct  the  mark  of  an 'impostor?  Again, 
when  implored  to  desist  from  his  radical  and  revolutionizing 
preaching,  he  to  name  his  own  price  for  the  silence  he  was  to 
keep,  he  repudiated  the  tempting  offer,  preferring  the  luxury 
of  his  convictions  and  his  mission,  with  poverty  if  need  bo.  to 
the  allurements  of  conservatism,  ease  and  wealth.  Surely  this 
could  never  be  the  part  of  an  impostor.  Nothing  but  the 
bigotry,  jealousy  and  malice  of  his  enemies  originated  ihi 
charge  of  imposture  and  nothing  but  blind  prejudice  and  la/y 
indifference  to  truth  can  account  for  the  perpetuation  of  the 
charge. 

Like  the  other  great  religions,  Mohammedanism  arose  as 
a  protest.  At  the  time  of  the  prophet's  appearance  there  were 
three  types  of  idolatry  extant  in  Arabia.  First  and  oldest,  the 
native  astrology  with  star  and  planet  worship  antedating  the 
advent  of  Jews  and  Christians.  Second,  Jewish  idolatry  which 
took  the  form  of  bestowing  worship  upon  Ezra  the  scribe  and 
probable  editor  of  the  Pentateuch.  Mohammed  observed  and 
complained  of  this  "Ezrolatry"  (Sura,  ix,  30).  Third,  Chris- 
tian idolatry,  which  consisted  not  only  in  the  worship  of  images 
and  relics,  but  also  of  three  gods,  for  the  "trinity"  had  here 
degenerated  into  tritheism  (Sura,  5).  Now  Mohammed's  wish 

—82— 


and  aim  was  to  turn  the  people  away  from  these  various 
idolatries  and  bring  them  back  to  what  he  thought  was  the 
original  Semitic  faith,  the  one  original  source  of  both  Judaism 
and  Christianity.  The  thought  of  instituting  a  new  religion 
seems  never  to  have  entered  the  prophet's  mind.  His  one 
thought  was  to  restore  the  ancestral  faith  of  Abraham  with  its 
simple  doctrine  of  pure  monotheism  and  obedience  to  the  one 
true  God.  This,  he  thought,  was  Abraham's  religion,  this,  he 
was  persuaded,  should  be  reinstated  and  all  forms  of  idolatry, 
indigenous,  Jewish,  Christian — abolished.  The  time  for  vindi- 
cating "the  true  faith"  had  arrived.  Mohammed  believed  he 
was  the  prophet  to  whom  it  had  been  revealed.  Five  other 
great  prophets,  he  said,  there  had  been  before  him,  namely, 
Adam,  Xoah,  Abraham,  Moses  and  Jesus.  To  each,  he  believed, 
a  revelation  had  been  vouchsafed  and  that  each  in  turn  was 
superseded  by  its  successor,  Mohammed  receiving  the  final 
revelation  and  establishing  the  absolute  religion.  All  this  the 
prophet  sincerely  believed,  regarding  himself  simply  as  the 
latest  medium  through  whom  the  Mighty  One  had  made  known 
His  word.  Nowhere  does  Mohammed  make  extravagant  or  ex- 
traordinary claims  for  himself.  "I  am  only  a  man  like  the  rest 
of  you.  I  am  not  a  miracle-worker,  not  an  angel.  I  am  frail 
and  liable  to  err.  I  am  an  apostle,  a  prophet,  the  last  of  the 
prophets."  In  these  phrases  did  he  describe  himself  again  and 
again  in  the  Qur'an.  Xor  does  he  think  that  to  him  has  been 
revealed  all  that  the  omniscient  Mind  contains.  In  the  thirty- 
first  Sura  we  read:  "If  all  the  seven  seas  were  changed  to  ink 
and  all  trees  to  pens,  they  could  not  write  all  the  things  God 
has  to  reveal  to  man." 

The  revelation  which  Mohammed  believed  he  received  con- 
stitutes the  "Qur'an,"  the  sacred  book,  or  Bible,  of  the  Mo- 
hammedans. It  is,  without  exception,  the  most  deeply  revered 
and  widely  read  of  all  the  sacred  scriptures  of  the  world,  its 
us.-  being  much  more  extensive  than  that  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment in  Christian  countries.  Moreover,  it  is  believed  by  the 
faithful  that  this  book  existed  from  all  eternity  in  heaven, 
whence  it  was  sent  down,  piecemeal  to  the  prophet,  by  one 
an  eel  or  another  and  following  the  delivery  dictated  to  a  sec- 
retary who  committed  it  to  writing  on  scraps  of  papyrus, 

—83— 


leather,  or  whatever  material  was  available  at  the  time,  the 
separate  parts  collected  and  edited  two  years  after  the  prophet's 
death:  by  Abu-Bekr.  Ten  years  later  (642)  it  was  revised  and 
issued,  as  a  final  recension,  by  Uthman,  the  third  Khalifa,  all 
earlier  versions  having  been  ordered  destroyed.  Thus  the 
Koran  is  unique  among  Bibles  in  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  single 
mind  and  has  a  uniform  text  in  all  editions.  Its  contents  may 
be  described  as  a  collection  or  potpourri  of  myths,  legends,  nar- 
ratives, legal  rules,  ceremonial  injunctions,  moral  precepts. 
The  Qur'an  is  a  reservoir  into  which,  through  Mohammed's 
mind,  many  different  streamlets  have  been  emptied.  That 
Jewish  and  Christian  stories  should  form  part  of  the  book  is 
not  strange,  for,  as  conductor  of  caravans  through  Judea  and 
Syria,  Mohammed  must  have  acquired  considerable  informa- 
tion on  Biblical  subjects.  Tales  of  Abraham,  Moses,  Jesus,  re- 
lated by  not  very  competent  reporters  entered  the  prophet's 
head  and  fermented  there.  What  he  knew  of  Bible  characters 
he  never  derived  from  direct  contact  with  the  Bible  itself.  The 
probability  is  he  never  saw  a  Hebrew  Bible  nor  a  Greek  New 
Testament.  But  many  a  Hebrew  story  as  recorded  in  rabbinical 
books  he  doubtless  heard,  while  the  apocalyptic  books  of  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments — Joel,  Daniel,  Revelation — with  their 
thrilling  accounts  of  the  Judgment  Day  told  symbolically  by 
reference  to  figures,  animals,  numbers,  all  these  exerted  their 
influence  upon  Mohammed  as  almost  every  page  of  the  Qur'an 
testifies.  That  there  should  be  contradictions  in  the  Qur'an  is 
to  be  expected  from  the  very  nature  and  manner  of  the  revela- 
tions. But  Mohammed  never  had  any  scruples  about  "progres- 
sive revelation"  as  applied  to  himself.  If  experience  proved  a 
certain  "revealed"  ordinance  to  be  unsatisfactory  another 
ordinance  was  revealed  later  on  to  supplement,  correct  or  per- 
haps even  to  annul  the  original  revelation.  In  this  connection 
it  is  instructive  to  know  that  the  scepticism  and  agnosticism 
which  have  resulted  from  the  discovery  of  contradictions  and 
limitations  in  the  Christian  Bible  have  their  parallel  in  Mo- 
hammedan countries  where  a  marked  defection  from  the  faith 
is  taking  place  among  those  who  see  the  inadequacy  of  the 
Qur'an  as  a  moral  and  political  guide.  As  many  thoughtful 
Chritians  have  cea«ed  to  follow  the  cross  and  abandoned  their 

—84— 


orthodoxy  when  enlightened  upon  the  fallibility  of  their 
Bible,  so  there  are  intelligent,  thinking  Mohammedans  who  for 
a  similar  reason  have  ceased  to  follow  the  crescent  and  are 
feeling  about  for  a  new  foundation  of  belief. 

Of  all  the  Bibles  of  the  great  religions,  the  Qur'an  is  the 
least  attractive  to  the  general  reader.  Curiosity  draws  him  to 
its  pages  but  he  is  quickly  repelled  because  there  is  no  con- 
tinuity of  thought,  no  charm  of  style,  both  the  thought  and  the 
style  suggesting  the  camel  of  the  desert,  at  liberty  to  browse 
wherever  stubble  is  to  be  found.  The  one  hundred  and  four- 
teen chapters  of  the  book  have  superscriptions  indeed,  but  these 
for  the  most  part  bear  no  relation  to  the  contents.  The  events 
chronicled  follow  no  chronological  order  and  only  the  most 
patient  scholarship  of  specialists  has  enabled  us  to  shape  from 
this  literary  waste  and  tangle  the  prophet's  thought  and  teach- 
ings. Had  Mohammed  known  how  to  write  there  might  have 
been  no  such  difficulties.  As  the  "revelations"  fell  from  his 
lips  they  were  caught  by  a  secretary,  jotted  down  on  any  ma- 
terial ready  to  hand  and  never  connectedly  arranged  during 
the  prophet's  life.  He  having  been  neither  a  theologian,  nor 
an  historian,  nor  a  philosopher,  but  an  enthusiast,  spoke  his 
revelations  as  they  came  regardless  of  their  agreement  with  or 
contradiction  of  earlier  ones.  His  thought  possessed  him,  not 
he  his  thought.  Prom  his  surcharged  brain  it  rushed  on  un- 
diked,  unchanneled,  too  swift  to  allow  of  skilful  or  consistent 
expression.  Carlyle  complained  that  the  Qur'an  was  the  most 
toilsome  reading  he  ever  undertook.  He  described  it  as  "a 
wearisome,  confused  jumble,  endless  iterations,  long  winded- 
ness,  entanglement  most  crude,  incondite,  insupportable  stupid- 
ity in  short."  But,  thanks  to  the  labor  of  Biblical  scholars,  who 
have  applied  the  principles  of  the  higher  criticism  to  the  Qur'an 
as  to  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  we  can  place  its  chapters 
in  their  chronological  order,  divide  the  book  into  three  sections 
corresponding  to  the  three  epochs  of  the  prophet's  career  and 
see  the  spirit  of  each  reflected  in  the  chapters  of  each  section. 
The  first  epoch,  marked  by  misgiving,  doubt,  struggle,  misap- 
preciation  and  opposition,  is  readily  discerned  in  a  series  of 
chapters  aglow  with  enthusiasm  and  bordering  on  frenzy,  re- 
cording his  visions  with  a  fervor  that  persuades  us  of  his  sin- 

—85— 


•tjerity.  The  second  epoch,  the  period  of  appreciation  and  suc- 
cess, is  evidenced  in  the  chapters  of  reasoning  and  argument; 
calm,  dispassionate,  yet  not  void  of  enthusiasm,  addressed  to 
converts  who  recognize  and  acknowledge  the  authority  of  the 
speaker.  The  third  epoch  finds  the  prophet  prone  to  make  con- 
cessions and  compromises  for  the  sake  of  still  greater  success. 
He  has  grown  shrewd,  calculating,  politic,  in  his  aggressive 
propaganda  and  all  this  is  reflected  in  a  group  of  chapters  whose 
weak,  willowy  utterances  indicate  descent  from  the  plane  of  a 
high  ideal  which  had  been  transfigured  by  sincere  consecration 
and  perfervid  enthusiasm. 

Turning  to  the  Qur'an,  as  we  have  turned  to  the  Bibles  of 
the  other  great  religions  in  search  of  their  respective  gospels, 
we  observe  that  the  duty  of  submission  to  God,  the  Resistless, 
mighty,  omnipotent  one,  is  enjoined  with  never  wearying  em- 
phasis. Submission,  that  is  the  note  which  Mohammedanism 
contributes  to  the  symphony  of  Universal  Religion.  The  very 
name  of  the  religion,  "Islam,"  means  submission.  For  the 
faithful  never  speak  of  their  religion  as  "Mohammedanism," 
but  always  as  "Islam.'  Then,  too,  in  the  ninety  and  nine 
M.-imos  of  Allah,  "the  Strong  One,"  the  idea  of  submission  is 
predominant.  He  is  called,  "the  one  to  whom  everything  is 
subject,  the  Lord  of  all  creatures,  the  Lord  of  the  East  and 
the  West,  the  all-governing,  the  all-compelling."  He  is  the 
Mighty  One  to  whom  all  things  and  all  creatures  must  sub- 
mit and  whose  mercy  is  due  to  his  very  omnipotence.  He  is 
likened  unto  the  wind  and  all  humanity  unto  a  field  of  grain 
that  sways  with  the  blowing  of  the  wind.  He  is  a  Sultan,  a  des- 
pot, and  Muslims  are  they  who  submit  (the  word  Muslim  having 
the  same  root  as  Islam),  they  who,  like  the  willows,  bend  be- 
fore the  blast;  rather  than  like  the  infidels,  who  resist  it,  as 
does  the  oak.  Thus  the  fundamental  religious  duty  of  Islam 
is  submission  and  it  implies  three  primary  obligations.  First, 
abhorrence  of  idolatry  as  the  most  heinous  of  sins,  bestowing 
on  other  supposed  gods  the  homage  due  to  Allah  alone.  When 
the  subjects  of  an  autocratic  Sultan  dare  to  enthrone  a  usurper 
and  to  do  him  homage,  they  are  punished  to  the  full  extent 
of  the  civil  law.  Even  so  idolaters  who  dare  to  worship  any 
other  god  than  the  heavenly  Sultan,  are  punished  to  the  full 

—86— 


extent  of  the  religious  law,  enunciated  repeatedly  in  the  Korai* 
and  to  be  fulfilled  on  the  Judgment  Day.  Every  mosque 
bears  witness  to  Mohammed's  hatred  of  idolatry,  no  statuary, 
no  images,  no  reproductions  of  any  human  forms  are  to  be 
seen,  solely  the  arabesque  ornaments  whose  geometric  trac- 
eries reproduce  only  objects  from  the  inanimate  world.  Sec- 
ond, the  duty  of  submission  involved  the  obligation  to  extend 
the  heavenly  Sultan's  Kingdom  on  earth,  and  by  force  if  need 
be,  because  refusal  to  recognize  and  do  homage  to  Him  is 
rebellion  and  rebellion  must  be  suppressed,  by  persuasion  if 
possible,  by  the  sword  if  necessary — a  doctrine  that  appealed 
to  the  military  temper  of  the  Saracen  and  which  Mohammed 
set  forth  by  precept  and  example.  Such  is  the  logic  of  a 
monarchical  creed.  This,  however,  must  be  said  concerning 
Islam's  appeal  to  force,  that  the  Mohammedan  sword  has  often- 
er  been  tempered  with  mercy  than  has  the  Christian,  albeit 
that  the  genius  and  spirit  of  Christianity  oppose  appeal  to 
force.  When  Omar  captured  Jerusalem  he  suffered  every 
Christian  life  to  be  spared,  when  Geoffrey  of  Lorraine  cap- 
tured the  city  he  put  ten  thousand  Muslims  to  merciless  death. 
The  third  obligation  identified  with  the  duty  of  submission 
is  obedience  to  the  commandments  of  Allah  as  taught  in  the 
Qur'an.  with  special  care  to  have  one's  moral  account 
"square"  when  the  Judgment  Day  dawns.  For  then  will  the 
heavenly  Sultan  determine  the  fate  of  each  human  soul.  Then 
will  a  man  walking  to  the  judgment  seat  be  met  by  a  loath- 
some looking  object  to  which  he  will  say,  "be  gone,"  but  it 
will  reply,  "I  cannot,  for  I  am  thy  conscience."  Then  will 
the  fraudulent  buyer  and  the  fraudulent  seller  walk  to  the 
judgment  seat  with  the  goods  they  fraudulently  bought  or 
sold  tied  to  their  necks  and  dragging  behind  them.  Then  too 
will  the  righteous  have  opened  unto  them  the  gates  of  Para- 
dise,— no  mere  reproduction  of  a  Turkish  harem, — having  its 
sensuous  delights  indeed,  but  its  spiritual  elements  besides. 
Most  frankly  and  even  naively  is  the  Mohammedan  motive 
for  right  conduct  presented  in  terms  of  Paradise  and  Hell. 
Nowhere  else  is  the  utilitarian  motive  for  virtue  more  explic- 
itly sd  forth  than  in  the  Qur'an. 

Five  "pilhu-s"  of  fidelity  are  set  up,  constituting  the  moral 

— 87 — 


and  religious  requirements  binding  upon  all  believers.  (1) 
Repetition  of  the  creed — "there  is  no  God  but  God  and  Mo- 
hammed is  his  prophet."  (2)  Prayer  and  ablutions;  five  times 
daily,  at  the  call  of  the  "Muezzin,"  from  his  minaret.  (3) 
Almsgiving,  two  and  a  half  per  cent  of  one's  goods  to  be  given 
the  poor,  (4)  fasting,  from  sunrise  to  sunset  in  the  month 
Ramadan,  in  which  the  prophet  fled  to  Medina  from  Mecca, 
(5)  a  pilgrimage,  at  least  once  in  one's  lifetime,  to  Mecca. 

Three  commandments  are  given  special  prominence  in  the 
ethical  teachings  of  Mohammedanism.  These  relate  to  total 
abstinence,  cleanliness  and  humaneness.  Essentially  charac- 
teristic of  Mohammed's  legislation  was  his  insistence  on  ab- 
stinence from  liquor.  Drunkenness  is  the  one  vice  most  fe;ired 
in  tropical  countries  and  generally  condemned  as  a  violation 
of  divine  law.  This  prevailing  conception  was  adopted  by 
the  prophet  as  an  integral  part  of  his  moral  code.  His  oppo- 
sition to  Christianity  was  based  in  part  on  its  failure  to  put 
an  absolute  veto  on  the  use  of  wine.  General  Lew  Wallace, 
after  prolonged  residence  at  Constantinople  declared  that  while 
Christian  drunkards  were  to  be  seen  daily  on  the  streets,  he 
never  once  saw  a  drunken  Muslim.  The  requirement  of  ablu- 
tions five  times  daily,  before  prayers,  led  very  naturally  to 
the  promotion  of  cleanliness. 

A  "Society  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to  animals"  is 
unknown  in  Mohammedan  countries,  except  in  cities  overrun 
by  Christians,  and  in  Turkish  cemeteries,  it  is  said,  the  four 
corners  of  every  slab  that  covers  a  grave  are  grooved  to  catch 
the  rainfall  and  so  attract  the  birds  to  drink  and  sing  over 
the  place  where  their  human  brethren  sleep.  This  tender  con- 
cern for  the  lower  animals  results  from  the  prophet's  injunc- 
tions touching  humaneness  which  appear  again  and  again  in 
the  pages  of  the  Qur'an. 

Concerning  the  charge  of  advocating  polygamy  and  slav- 
ery, made  against  Mohammed,  it  should  be  remembered  that 
these  evils  existed  before  his  day  and  the  most  that  could 
then  be  done  was  to  improve  the  condition  of  slaves  and  the 
position  of  women,  both  of  which  Mohammed  achieved.  He 
gave  women  rights  of  property,  he  regulated  divorce  and  put 
restrictions  on  polygamy  by  fixing  the  number  of  wives  at 

—88— 


four, — a  law  that  provoked  no  general  antagonism  because  it 
made  allowance  for  the  physical  passion  of  the  tropics,  even 
as  the  law  prohibiting  use  of  intoxicants  conformed  to  the 
popular  belief  as  to  the  wisdom  of  practicing  abstinence  and 
therefore  the  law  was  readily  approved. 

When  we  reflect  upon  the  utterly  uncivilized  character  of 
the  tribes  that  inhabited  Africa  and  parts  of  Asia  at  the  time 
<•!'  Mohammed's  appearance  as  a  reformer,  we  may  well  be- 
lieve that  the  doctrine  of  submission  to  an  irresistible  Ruler 
whose  decrees  are  to  be  unquestioningly  accepted  and  obeyed 
was  exactly  suited  to  the  needs  of  these  peoples,  belonging 
AS  they  did  to  the  childhood  stage  of  human  development, 
when  simple  obedience  to  rules  regardless  of  their  meaning  or 
purpose  is  the  highest  possible  virtue.  For  peoples  who  have 
evolved  from  that  stage  the  gospel  of  Islam,  or  submission, 
can  have  no  inspiration.  To  the  everlasting  credit  of  Moham- 
medanism it  must  be  said  that  in  lifting  to  a  higher  plane  of 
life  the  various  tribes  of  Africa  and  Asia  to  which  it  ministered 
it  accomplished  that  which  contemporary  Judaism  and  Chris- 
tianity in  those  localities  were  never  able  to  achieve.  In  this 
civilizing  work  Islam  performed  an  invaluable  service  to  the 
world. 


SUMMARY  AND  CONCLUSION. 

"Whatever  road  I  take  joins  the  highway  that  leads  to  thee." 

Parsee  Scriptures. 

"I  make  bold  to  say  that  we  who  are  now  living  will  behold  the 
dawn  of  a  new  religion  which  is  to  be  really  universal  in  its  principles 
and  as  broad  as  humanity  in  its  boundaries;  which  is  not,  however,  to 
be  Christianity,  nor  Judaism,  nor  Buddhism,  nor  Neo-BrahmanSsm.  but 
a  new  faith  into  which  the  specific  religions  are  in  form  to  die  that  they 
may  continue  to  live  in  spiritual  substance." — Wm.  J.  Potter,  in  1893. 


In  the  name  of  universal  brotherhood,  in  the  interests  of 
truth  and  in  the  spirit  of  love,  we  have  gone  like  pilgrims, 
with  the  staff  of  sincerity  and  the  scrip  of  sympathy  to  the 
shrines  of  sacred  scripture  that  contain  the  gospel  of  the  great 
religions. 

What  has  our  pilgrimage  done  for  us?  Intellectually,  it 
has  widened  the  bounds  of  our  knowledge  concerning  1lie.se 
systems  of  faith,  it  has  corrected  certain  errors  and  false  im- 
pressions, thereby  banishing  prejudices  that  were  the  product 
of  those  misconceptions.  Spiritually,  our  pilgrimage  has  broad- 
ened us,  made  us  more  catholic  in  our  sympathies,  more  cos- 
mopolitan in  our  attitude  to  the  non-Christian  religions,  more 
responsive  to  inspirations  from  sources  we  supposed  were  un- 
promising, if  not  wholly  void  of  helpfulness.  In  a  word,  our 
pilgrimage  has  deepened  within  us  that  spirit  which  is  more 
than  forbearance,  more  than  tolerance,  more  than  charity  and 
to  which  we  give  the  name  Appreciation;  the  spirit  Ili;it 
prompts  us  to  bow  before  every  teacher,  be  he  Buddha  or 
Zoroaster,  Confucius  or  Jesus;  that  leads  us  to  find  moral  and 
spiritual  food  in  all  sacred  scriptures,  be  they  the  Pitakas  or 
the  New  Testament,  the  Avesta  or  the  Qur'an,  valuing  each 
teacher,  each  book,  in  proportion  to  the  helpfulness  derived 
therefrom;  the  spirit  that  in  looking  at  the  various  sects  of 
Christianity  compares  them  to  the  stops  and  pedals  of  a  great 
organ,  each  contributing  some  tone  or  timbre  toward  the  com- 
plete harmony  of  human  faith.  Our  pilgrimage  has  taught  us 
that  no  one  can  enter  into  the  respective  messages  of  the 
world's  great  religions  or  into  the  lives  of  the  great  founders 
and  teachers  without  taking  a  distinct  forward  step  in  spir- 
itual progress,  without  reducing  the  number  of  one's  pre.ju- 

—90— 


dices,  without  developing  the  qualities  of  fair-mindedness,  can- 
dor, catholicity,  appreciation.  In  so  far,  then,  as  our  pilgrim- 
age has  achieved  for  us  these  results  we  must  count  it  a  dis- 
tinct spiritual  gain. 

We  have  discovered  that  all  of  the  seven  extant  great 
religions,  despite  their  differences,  face  the  same  way,  look 
up  to  the  same  ideal  of  a  diviner  life  on  earth  as  man's  most  im- 
mediate concern;  all  ask  the  same  essential,  vital  questions  re- 
lating to  morals  and  religion,  to-wit:  Is  there  a  God?  Is  man 
immortal?  Is  duty  binding  upon  us?  What  shall  I  do  to  be 
saved?  To  each  of  these  primary  religious  questions  each 
of  these  religions  gives  an  answer  of  its  own.  All,  again, 
emphasize  some  one  particular  doctrine  or  belief,  constituting 
the  keynote  of  each. 

From  actual  reading  of  the  Bibles  of  these  religions  we 
have  proved  that  moral  precepts  relating  to  justice,  gentle- 
ness, tolerance,  truthfulness,  forgiveness,  love,  which  many 
think  are  to  be  found  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments  alone, 
appear  also  in  the  other  five  Bibles.  Nay  more,  we  discovered 
certain  moral  maxims  in  these  scriptures  which  are  lacking  in 
the  Christian  Bible,  while  every  moral  sentiment  found  in  it 
is  paralelled  by  corresponding-  sentences  in  one  or  another  of 
the  rest. 

The  Golden  Rule  we  once  thought  original  with  Jesus,  but 
we  came  across  it  in  the  teachings  of  Confucius  and  of  Gotama, 
we  read  the  version  of  it  given  by  Mohammed  and  by  Zoro- 
aster. Even  Moses,  or  the  author  of  the  injunction  "an  eye 
for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,  we  observed,  did  not  teach 
a  doctrine  of  revenge  in  those  words,  but  on  the  contrary,  he 
set  forth  the  doctrine  of  justice  as  then  understood  and  jus- 
tice is  the  heart  of  the  Golden  Rule. 

The  ten  commandments,  we  found,  might  be  extended  to 
at  least  fourteen  so  as  to  include  the  inculcating  of  temper- 
ance, humaneness,  cleanliness  and  intellectual  honesty,  com- 
mandments contributed  by  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism  and 
Hinduism. 

Again,  by  appeal  to  these  same  Bibles  we  have  discovered 
tliiit  the  religious  sentiments  of  reverence,  wonder,  awe,  aspira- 
tion are  present  in  the  hearts  of  the  billion  non-Christian  souls 

—91— 


no  less  than  in  the  hearts  of  the  four  hundred  and  fifty  mil- 
lions who  take  the  Christian  name.  We  listened  to  a  Hindu 
psalm  and  were  at  once  reminded  of  a  similar  psalm  in  the 
Old  Testament  and  also  of  the  refrain  in  the  "Litany"  of 
the  Episcopal  Prayer-Book.  We  heard  the  Parsee's  prayer  for 
purity  and  realized  how  slight  a  change  in  the  words  of  that 
prayer  is  -required  to  make  it  suit  our  own  spiritual  need.  We 
read  the  Buddha's  "eight-fold  noble  path"  and  though  we 
believe  neither  in  reincarnation  nor  in  Nirvana,  we  know  that 
we  too  must  walk  that  path  if  all  the  possibilities  of  character- 
development  are  to  be  ours.  We  opened  the  "Kings"  and  the 
Qur'an  and  found  that  each  contains  the  credentials  of  a  re- 
ligion that  on  many  a  spiritual  theme  speaks  to  our  hearts  in 
accents  beautiful  and  divine. 

So  deeply  impressed  were  we  by  the  purity  of  spirit,  the 
nobility  of  purpose  and  consecration  to  an  ideal  aim  that  mark 
the  lives  of  the  founders  of  the  great  religions  that  we  shrink 
from  comparing  them.  We  feel  compelled  to  refrain  from 
declaring  the  spirit  of  any  one  of  them  to  be  superior  to  that 
of  all  the  rest,  a  practice  that  prevails  pretty  generally  among 
representatives  of  these  religions.  Who,  that  has  made  an 
impartial  study  of  the  life  and  work  of  these  great  teachers, 
will  dare  to  say  that  the  spirit  of  Zoroaster  was  any  less  pure, 
less  fine,  less  exalted  than  the  spirit  of  Jesus?  Who  will  <l;ire 
to  say  that  Confucius  was  less  consecrated  than  the  Buddha 
or  that  Mohammed  was  less  sincere  than  Moses?  Who,  in  the 
light  of  even  our  imperfect  studies  in  comparative  religion 
will  think  of  affirming  that  Jesus  summed  up  in  his  personality 
all  the  qualities  of  the  other  great  religious  teachers  and  added 
to  that  sum  his  own  distinguishing  attributes?  Far -be  it  from 
us  to  detract  one  iota  from  that  which  constitutes  the  spiritual 
greatness  of  Jesus,  yet  there  is  nothing  to  warrant  so  extrava- 
gant a  claim  as  this  "pleroma"  implies.  From  all  such  com- 
parisons, contrasts  and  extravagant,  unwarranted  claims  our 
pilgrimage  has  saved  us;  at  the  same  time.it  has  bidden  us  be 
discriminating  in  our  estimates  and  judgments  both  of  the 
teachers  and  of  their  respective  gospels. 

Not  the  least  important  of  the  discoveries  resulting  from 
our  pilgrimage  is  that  which  pertains  to  the  unity  and  diversity 

—92— 


of  the  great  religions.  We  see  that  all  are  one  because  all 
are  rooted  in  universal  human  nature  and  all  are  simply  so 
many  expressions  of  man's  effort  to  perfect  himself  in  all  his 
relations — and  this  effort  is  the  essence  of  religion.  On  the 
other  hand,  these  religions  are  all  different  because  of  their 
various  local  origins  and  because  of  the  various  special  claims 
made  by  each  but  shared  by  no  other.  In  other  words,  we 
have  seen  that  each  of  these  religions  has  a  special  and  a  uni- 
versal element,  the  former  indicating  its  difference  from  the 
others,  the  latter  its  oneness  with  them.  Mohammedanism  is 
a  religion,  because  of  its  universal  element,  i.  e.,  its  root  and  the 
ideahvard  effort,  beliefs  and  sentiments  which  it  shares  with 
all  other  religions.  It  is  the  Mohammedaoi  religion  because 
of  its  special  element,  its  claim  that  Mohammed  is  the  prophet 
of  God  and  the  Qur'an  God's  supreme  revelation  to  man.  Chris- 
tianity is  a  religion  because  of  the  same  universal  element  which 
it  contains;  it  is  the  Christian  religion  because  of  its  special 
claim  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ  of  God,  the  sole  Savior  of  man- 
kind. So  each  of  the  other  five  religions  has  its  universal  ele- 
ment, its  ideas,  sentiments,  aspirations,  which  it  shares  with 
all  others;  each  has  also  its  special  element,  represented  by 
those  claims  and  doctrines  which  are  peculiar  to  itself. 

The  question  therefore  arises,  very  naturally  and  sponta- 
neously, will  any  one  of  these  seven  religions  conquer  and 
absorb  the  other  six  and  so  become  itself  a  universal  religion? 
At  the  World's  Parliament  of  Religions  this  expectation  was 
entertained  and  expressed  by  one  or  more  representatives  of 
each  of  the  seven  religions.  The  fervent  Buddhist  pictured  the 
universal  reign  of  Gotama's  faith.  The  enthusiastic  Moham- 
medan made  bold  to  predict  the  universal  sway  of  Islam.  The 
devout  Christian  prayed  for  the  redemption  of  the  world 
through  his  Lord  and  Savior  Jesus  Christ.  At  Saratoga,  in 
1894,  Unitarianism  was  declared  "identical  with  Universal 
Religion ; ' '  yet  it  still  remains  a  sect  of  Christianity,  still  re- 
tains the  Christian  name  and  singles  out  the  religion  of  Jesus 
to  be  accepted  by  all  the  churches  of  the  National  Conference 
and  makes  acceptance  of  this  religion  the  central  plank  of  its 
denominational  platform,  saying  not  one  word  of  any  other 
7-ditrion  as  being  even  partially  true  or  of  any  other  great 

—93— 


teacher  as  making  any  contribution  essential  to  the  formation 
of  an  all-round  human  ideal.  But  would  a  Baptist,  Methodist 
or  Presbyterian  change  his  name  to  "Unitarian"  even  were 
it  a  synonym  for  universal  religion?  Would  a  Jew  ever  join 
a  Buddhist  church  if  Buddhism  were  the  name  of  a  universal  re- 
ligion? Would  a  Mohammedan,  even  were  he  to  forget  Geof- 
frey of  Lorraine,  acept  the  name  "Christian"  as  equivalent 
to  universal?  Would  a  Christian  be  willing  to  be  styled  "Mo- 
hammedan" were  Islam  to  attain  universality?  These  queries 
suggest  that  there  are  certain  insurmountable  obstacles  that 
stand  in  the  way  of  any  one  of  the  seven  great  religions  rep- 
resenting universal  religion  and  these  we  must  now  consider. 

1.  To  begin  with,  they  all  are  built  on  the  principle  of 
authority.    Each  appeals  to  its  own  leader,  or  book,  when  any 
disputed  or  open  question  arises  for  settlement.     To  whom 
shall  we  go  for  the  answer?    The  Buddhist  points  to  his  deified 
Gotama,  saying  "go  to  him,  he  has  the  words  of  eternal  truth." 
The  Parsee  points  with  like  remark  to  his  inspired  Zarathustra, 
the  Moslem  to  his  infallible  Mohammed,  the  Christian  to  his 
supranatural  Jesus.    But  it  is  an  insult  to  a  Christian  to  ask 
him  to  accept  the  authority  of  Gotama  or  of  Mohammed  and 
it  is  equally  an  insult  to  ask  a  Buddhist  or  a  Mohammedan  to 
accept  the  authority  of  Jesus  or  of  Paul. 

Universal  Religion  insults  none  because  it  recognizes  all, 
showing  impartial  gratitude  and  reverence  to  all  and  paying 
due  homage  to  each  according  to  the  amount  of  truth  he  has 
taught  and  the  degree  to  which  his  character  ennobles  and 
inspires. 

2.  Hindus,  Buddhists,  Parsees,  Christians,  and  the  rest, 
all  pursue  truth  by  the  method  of  authority,  i.  e.  by  appeal  to 
"revelation."    "This  is  true,"  each  one  says,  "because  it  is 
in  my  sacred  book,  in  this  revelation  from  God"  and  of  course 
there  can  be  no  debating  the  question  because  it  is  a  revela- 
tion.    But  alas,  the  alleged  revelations  do  not  give  one  and 
the  same  answer  to  every  question.     Take,  for  example,  that 
most  pressing  practical  question  "What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved  ?" 
The  Hindu  says,  "Study  and  meditate,"  the  Buddhist,  "live 
an  absolutely  unselfish  life;"  the  Parsee,  "be  pure  in  thought, 
word  and  deed;"  the  Confucian,  "reproduce  Nature's  order;" 

—94- 


the  Jew,  "fulfill  the  law  of  righteousness;"  the  Christian,  "be- 
lieve  on  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ ; ' '  the  Mohammedan,  ' '  submit  to 
the  decrees  of  the  heavenly  Sultan,  Allah."  Here,  then,  are 
seven  revelations  offering  seven  different  answers  to  our  ques- 
tion, each  one  of  them,  moreover,  imposing  its  answer  as  dog- 
ma, that  is,  as  not  to  be  questioned  because  "revealed." 

Universal  Religion  appeals  to  none  of  these  conflicting  reve- 
lations, but  to  evidence,  and  it  insists  on  debate  as  absolutely 
indispensable  to  the  discovery  of  truth.  It  holds  that  the  first 
question  to  be  asked  concerning  any  statement  of  belief  must 
be,  is  it  true  and  this  can  be  determined  only  by  appeal  to 
that  standard  of  truth-seeking  which  accords  freedom  of 
thought  to  each  human  soul  and  permits  nothing  but  the  agree- 
ment of  all  capable  of  thinking  on  the  disputed  question  (the 
"consensus  of  the  competent")  to  settle  it,  and  even  then  it 
makes  allowance  for  the  possible  discovery  of  new  facts  which 
may  in  some  measure  modify  the  conclusion  reached.  To  be 
sure  the  belief,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  no  truer  then  than  it  was 
at  first,  but  nothing  short  of  such  a  test  could  warrant  regard- 
ing it  as  a  universally  accepted  truth.  In  other  words,  the 
method  of  universal  religion  is  not  dogmatic  but  scientific.  It 
does  not  say,  "this  is  true  because  it  is  in  this  sacred  book, 
or  because  it  was  uttered  by  this  founder;"  it  says,  this  is 
true  liccjuisc  it  has  been  tested,  because  it  has  been  sifted,  sub- 
"  jected  to  the  most  careful  and  crucial  scrutiny,  because  it  has 
successfully  passed  through  the  ordeal  of  that  six-fold  process 
known  as  the  method  of  science,  without  which  no  open  ques- 
tion in  any  department  of  thought  has  ever  yet  been  closed. 

3.  All  the  great  religions  make  membership  depend  on 
acceptance  of  their  Leader,  or  their  Sacred  Book,  or  both.  To 
join  a  Christian  church  one  must  accept  the  New  Testament 
;is  the  standard  of  faith  and  morals,  and  regard  Jesus  as  Savior, 
or  at  least  as  the  complete,  all-sufficient  guide  and  exemplar. 
Hut  this  test  of  fellowship  shuts  out  four  hundred  and  fifty 
million  Buddhists  who  accept  the  "Pitakas"  and  who  regard 
finlama  as  their  Savior  or  Leader.  It  shuts  out  two  hundred 
million  Mohammedans  who  accept  the  Qur'an  as  their  standard 
in  religion  and  who  look  on  Mohammed  as  the  perfect  Teacher 
;ind  (Jiiide.  In  short,  the  Christian  requirement  for  membership 

—95— 


shuts  out  two-thirds  of  the  human  race.  Equally  exclusive  is 
the  Buddhist  test  of  fellowship  and  all  the  others  in  greater 
or  less  degree  shut  out  souls  who  should  be  welcome  whore 
the  common  object  is  to  strive  for  perfection  in  all  the  rela- 
tions of  life. 

Universal  Religion  sets  aside  these  excluding  tests  of  fel- 
lowship. It  seeks  to  unite  men  and  women  not  in  the  bonds 
of  Christian  love,  or  of  Buddhist  love  or  of  Mohammedan  love, 
but  solely  in  the  bonds  of  human  love.  Christianity  aims  to 
unite  men  in  the  bonds  of  Christian  love.  It  accepts  all  Chris- 
tians on  equal  terms,  but  all  non-Christians  on  no  tot-ins. 
Universal  Religion  holds  that  it  is  not  enough  for 
a  group  of  men  and  women  to  be  brothers  and  sisters  in 
Christ,  or  in  Mohammed,  or  in  Moses;  they  must  be  brothers 
and  sisters  in  humanity  with  all  the  rest  of  mankind ;  that 
is  what  true,  ideal  fellowship  calls  for.  Universal  Religion 
welcomes  all  free  souls  who  wish  to  live  upward  toward  truth 
of  though*,  truth  of  feeling  and  truth  of  will,  as  our  lamented 
pioneer,  Dr.  F.  E.  Abbot,  expressed  it.  Only  they  who  wish 
to  live  downward  to  the  opposite  of  these  supreme  ends  of  life, 
if  indeed  there  be  any  souls  absolutely  given  over  to  irreligion, 
could  Universal  Religion  exclude.  For  no  man  can  live  up- 
ward and  downward  at  the  same  time.  In  actual  life  we  are 
neither  wholly  angelic  nor  wholly  demonic  but  all  of  us  .-ire 
either  religious  or  irreligious,  that  is  to  say  all  of  us  either 
strive  to  live  upward  and  make  effort  toward  the  ideal  our 
aim  or  we  make  no  such  effort  toward  Truth,  Duty,  Love. 
Hence,  if  there  is  to  be  a  religious  fellowship  at  all  it  can  in- 
clude only  those  who  wish  to  be  religious,  that  is,  to  live  up- 
ward. Futile  and  vain  it  is  to  think  of  an  all-embodying  human 
fellowship  because  religion  excludes  irreligion  as  ^ovcnmiont 
excludes  anarchy.  We  can  hope  to  unite  men  in  one  groat 
fellowship  only  if  that  fellowship  be  religious.  Universal  Re- 
ligion accepts  the  irreconcilable  antagonism  between  living  up- 
ward and  living  downward,  between  religion  and  irroli^ion 
and  consequently  makes  its  test  of  fellowship  the  wish  to  livo 
upward  and  not  by  any  means  assent  to  any  intellectual  propo- 
sitions, as  is  done  by  the  special  religions  and  their  sects.  When 
the  dream  of  such  a  fellowship  is  historically  realized  it  will 

—96— 


include  all  sects,  large  and  small ;  not,  however,  as  sects,  but  as 
free  human  souls,  for  then  all  these  sects  will  have  ceased 
to  be  sectarian,  submitting,  in  the  love  of  truth,  all  their  sec- 
tarian doctrines  to  the  test  of  the  method  of  freedom,  the  meth- 
od of  science.  If  the  world  continues  to  advance,  sectarianism 
will  become  as  absurd  in  religion  as  it  already  is  in  science. 
Today  the  universal  church  fellowship  is  only  an  ideal;  to- 
morrow it  will  be  a  fact,  because  history  affirms  that  man  is 
a  progressive  being.  Perfect  liberty  in  perfect  love;  anything 
less  than  that  is  unworthy  to  serve  as  the  principle  of  fellow- 
ship for  a  religion  that  would  be  universal. 

4.  Each  of  the  seven  great  religions,  by  reason  of  the 
particular  circumstances  under  which  it  came  into  the  world 
and  the  particular  type  of  evils  to  protest  against  which  it 
originated,  sets  forth  a  more  or  less  partial,  one-sided  ideal 
of  life.  Each  uplifts  a  side  of  life  and  makes  development  of 
that  side  the  main  feature  of  its  teaching  rather  than  develop- 
ment of  all  the  possibilities  of  our  human  nature  in  right  relation 
and  in  proper  proportion, — the  physical  and  the  intellectual, 
the  emotional  and  the  practical.  As  an  example  take  Chris- 
tianity, the  religion  with  which  we  are  most  familiar.  It  is 
strongly  representative  of  the'  feminine  or  emotional  virtues, 
— meekness,  humility,  resignation,  compassion,  self-abnegation 
love,  just  as  early  Judaism  is  in  large  measure  representative  of 
the  masculine  virtues, — justice,  loyalty,  fortitude,  patriotism.  In 
his  emphasis  on  self-abnegation  Jesus  was  led  to  attach  small 
value  to  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  as  a  worthy  object  in  life, 
and  to  look  on  the  physical  and  aesthetic  life  as  a  hindrance 
to  the  development  of  the  spiritual  life.  True,  this  very  one- 
sidedness,  this  exclusive  glorification  of  the  gentler  virtues 
was  the  secret  of  his  success  as  a  restorer  of  hope  and  faith 
to  an  empire  sunk  in  despair  and  unbelief.  His  message  proved 
to  be  precisely  what  was  then  wanted.  By  uplifting  the  emo- 
tional side  at  the  expense  of  the  physical,  intellectual  and 
aesthetic,  Jesus  manifested  a  noble  narrowness  that  saved 
the  Roman  world.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  this  very  onesided- 
ness  makes  it  impossible  to  regard  the  ideal  taught  by  Jesus 
as  a  complete  one,  while  gratefully  and  reverently  recogniz- 
ing and  appreciating  his  indispensable  contributions  to  the 

—97— 


complete  ideal.  Similarly  a  study  of  the  ideals  set  forth  by 
the  other  great  Teachers  would  lead  us  to  a  like  conclusion, 
namely,  that  each  has  the  defects  of  its  qualities  and  does  not 
cover  every  side  of  life. 

Universal  Religion,  therefore,  heir  of  the  historic  religions, 
inherits  the  contributions  of  each  to  the  formation  of  the  com- 
plete ideal  of  life,  holding  that  no  one  religion  contains  it, 
for  it  is  and  can  be  nothing  less  than  the  harmonious  develop- 
ment of  all  the  possibilities  of  our  many-sided  human  nature 
in  one  rounded  life.  Toward  this  modern  conception  of  life's 
ideal  each  of  the  seven  great  religions  contributes  its  special 
quota,  but  no  one  of  them  in  its  sacred  scriptures  presents 
this  ideal. 

Universal  Religion,  therefore,  in  answer  to  the  question, 
whom  shall  we  follow,  whom  shall  we  accept  as  our  Leader, 
our  representative  of  the  ideal  of  humanity,  will  mention  not 
any  one,  but  all — Gotama,  Zarathustra,  Confucius,  Moses,  Jesus, 
Mohammed (  adding  Socrates,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  all  other 
world-teachers.  If  asked  "why  mention  all  and  refuse  to  se- 
lect one?"  the  answer  is  because  it  takes  all  of  these  and 
more  to  embody  the  full-orbed  human  ideal.  There  never 
was  in  any  one  soul  a  concentration  of  all  the  perfections  pos- 
sible to  all  persons,  past,  present  and  to  be.  Only  in  imag- 
ination, not  in  history,  has  such  a  Leader  lived,  though  in 
China  they  think  him  Confucius,  in  Ceylon,  Gotama,  the 
Buddha,  in  Christendom,  Jesus  the  Christ.  As  the  entire 
beauty  and  excellence  of  the  diamond  does  not  shine  from 
any  one  of  its  many  facets,  but  is  produced  only  from  them 
altogether,  so  it  takes  all  the  great  religious  Leaders  and  more 
beside,  to  produce  the  beauty  and  excellence  of  the  ideal  of 
humanity. 

Such  are  the  chief  reasons  wrhy  no  one  of  the  seven  great 
religions  can  ever  conquer  and  absorb  the  other  six  and  become 
itself  a  universal  religion.  As  long  as  each  one  of  them  re- 
mains sectarian,  setting  up  an  external  authority,  a  dogma,  a 
book,  a  name,  a  test,  repudiated  by  all  the  rest,  it  is  absurd 
to  expect  that  any  one  of  them  will  ever  be  equivalent  to  Uni- 
versal Religion.  A  union  of  these  conflicting  systems  of  faith 
under  the  banner  of  any  one  of  them  is  utterly  impossible.  The 

—98— 


only  possible  union  is  one  not  of  systems  but  of  souls,  a  re- 
ligions brotherhood  of  free  souls  united  on  the  basis  of  free- 
dom for  the  attainment  of  moral  and  religious  truth  by  the 
method  of  freedom,  to  the  end  that  life  may  be  richer,  grander, 
diviner. 

As  fast  as  men  learn  to  value  spiritual  freedom  more 
than  bondage  to  tradition  or  creed,  as  fast  as  people  grow  to 
care  more  for  truth  than  for  sectarian  victory,  so  fast  will 
they  hasten  the  advent  of  that  religion  which  will  lift  them 
above  all  differences  of  creed,  color,  class  and  race  into  that 
sublime  religious  fellowship  which  has  been  the  dream  of  every 
;i^c  and  of  every  clime. 


AU 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


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